GT LA Lakers vs Denver Nuggets @Staples Arena 3/11/2015 7:30 PM (0-3)

[StarneyBinston]

Russell vs. Mudiay Breakdown by DraftExpress

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/DAngelo-Russell-vs-Emmanuel-Mudiay-2015-16-NBA-Matchup-Video-5316

[crazyeights]

At least He has taken advantage of grabbing defensive rebounds with a shot blocker that generates them and has looked like a monster on offense in isolation (although to be fair, he hasn't exactly faced a murderers row of defenders). Bass lineups should be illegal though.

Fixed.

[lake_show]

My thoughts after the game:

I'm hearing alot of whining about russell not getting burn in the fourth quarter last night but why would you bench clarkson or lou who were both scoring well to let a rookie come in who is cold. I understand the learning experience is valuable but they needed to try to win that game at home before the road trip.

Randle is an offensive force but he gives up almost every point he scores at the other end of the floor. I know this looks worse because we do not have a legitimate 2nd option at center. But his rotations look awful he trys to gamble and pressure for the steal and doesn't get back to cover his man charging to the rim.

Scott's offense was horrible. I thought the offense looked great while running high screen and roll's which led to clarkson scoring any time he wanted up until the 4th quarter. Why they quit running the screen and roll when it was so automatic i couldn't help but smh while watching the 4th. Only an idiot of a coach would have clarkson pull his foot off the gas to try and get randle started.

Brandon bass needs to be traded at the deadline for a second round pick or packaged with somebody else to try and get a backup center.

This last one hurts my soul being that Kobe is the reason i became a NBA fan but i think Anthony Brown could have contributed more than what Kobe has so far. At least he would not force shots and stay somewhat in front of the guy he's defending. I hope he can turn it around but so far its rough.

Lou Williams was NOT scoring well. He kept getting fouled which is great but I hope no one truly believes that that's an offense we can count on late in the fourth quarter.

The other problem with having Lou out there is it takes the ball out of Clarkson's hands. Lou is looking to shoot or get fouled but its not like he was shooting well, or facilitating well.

And, the offense did play better when they were running high pick and roll... but they were running it with Russell. Russell had 6 assists last night in 20 minutes. He just does a WAAAY better job of facilitating the offense than anyone else on our team (that includes Huertas). He sets up Kobe in the right spots. Even made him look useful for a short period of time, and found Clarkson open on a handful of wide open shots. What else could you ask for.

No reason Russell shouldnt be out there late in the game.

[Slava]

fire Scott, what the actual hell was that. We won't win a game whole season if we can't defend against Denver

Clarkson was amazing though, 30 points, him and Randle are practically our only bright spots

Also Kobe needs a 3pt ban along with Russell (at the moment) and Williams (though he did work to get them free throws, so not too bad their), whoever our shooting coach is, fire him because he is useless

Also why the hell is Hibbert not capable of rebounds, he's 7'2, Hasheem Thabeet would be better at this stage for us, at least he'd get some boards, i would love it if we started Tarik Black (though that would mean Scott had some balls and imagination, neither of which he has)

We need to do something otherwise we'll be just terrible again, being terrible again shouldn't be an option, we should be at least mediocre (i'm not asking for a lot, 32 wins, is that too much to ask), if we can't do that, get rid of the doofus son and bring in someone who knows a thing or two about running a team from a basketball standpoint

Not sure what more you could expect of Hibbert, we all knew his shortcomings and he is still leading the team in defensive BPM by a healthy margin while running the break hard and finishing with more than his usual vigor.

[Jedi32]

scott has to let russell sink or swim. we are not a contender this year so there is no reason that russell should not be playing as much as he wants. i know some here are not really high on russell but i still think he should be given the benefit of the doubt for the year.

[WVlakerfan]

[/quote]
Lou Williams was NOT scoring well. He kept getting fouled which is great but I hope no one truly believes that that's an offense we can count on late in the fourth quarter.
[/quote]

How is getting to the foul line not scoring well(analytic love 3pt, dunks, and free throws). I can understand your point about lou not being the facilitator that D'angelo but he was shooting 3-11, missed some wide open looks, and acted like he was afraid to attack the basket. Also Lou is statistically much better at this point in time. I concede that at some point we are going to have to let D'angelo sink or swim with the game on the line but i don't think last night was the time for that. Give it 20 games if at the end of that we are 10 games below .500 and Russell is not getting 30 mins a game then it is time to be upset.

[TyCobb]

I thought the Byron hate peaked from the Lin fans last year, but the primadonna's groupies are pretty bad too.

I'm going to assume you are labeling Russell as the prima donna and anyone critical of Scott for how he's handling Russell a groupie, if I'm off a genuinely apologize and would ask for a clarification.

Having said that, the type of post quoted is poison to a board. There's really nothing constructive from that comment and just serves as a way to divide the posters on here in a way that creates hostility.

People have specifically been critical of Scott's rotation and offensive and defensive systems. People have mentioned lack of ball movement, inability to defend pnr, certain lineups being out there too long and certain players sitting too long, as well as Scott's track record for coaching bad defense. Instead of just calling it hate and taking a shot at those being critical like some random poster would do, at least add something of value or just hit delete and move on.

If your post was one fueled by emotion like many are during the game, that might excuse your lack of substance, but that's still not an excuse for attacking posters.

The board is already divided when mods are asking for Kobe to break a leg.

Real rich coming from you, after all yours posts lately have been all negative.

[TyCobb]

I thought the Byron hate peaked from the Lin fans last year, but the primadonna's groupies are pretty bad too.

I'm going to assume you are labeling Russell as the prima donna and anyone critical of Scott for how he's handling Russell a groupie, if I'm off a genuinely apologize and would ask for a clarification.

Having said that, the type of post quoted is poison to a board. There's really nothing constructive from that comment and just serves as a way to divide the posters on here in a way that creates hostility.

People have specifically been critical of Scott's rotation and offensive and defensive systems. People have mentioned lack of ball movement, inability to defend pnr, certain lineups being out there too long and certain players sitting too long, as well as Scott's track record for coaching bad defense. Instead of just calling it hate and taking a shot at those being critical like some random poster would do, at least add something of value or just hit delete and move on.

If your post was one fueled by emotion like many are during the game, that might excuse your lack of substance, but that's still not an excuse for attacking posters.

Not for nothing Doc, but I'd say this does just as much to 'poison the board' as that quote did:

This is probably a good time to remind people that Scott once led a team to 26 straight losses, LMAO

Point being, neither side is wrong in the Scott debate... It's all just opinions.

This has been the theme on this board, but it's cute Cash is taking exception to my one post against hundreds of others from the anti-Scott crew who I'm convinced just repeat what they see and hear elsewhere, because none of it is unique or originial.

[KIT]

Mitch was standing next to where I sat in the 4th quarter. I felt bad for him.

[moonpie]

Courtesy of 44TheLogo over at LG who was at the game last night:

was at the game w/ floor level seats

jotted down some notes

halftime:

The rotation is actually on a set time schedule. At set times players will simply go check themselves in without any coaches doing anything.

On timeouts the coaches huddle and Byron doesn't talk (madsen does most of the talking) and then with 10 seconds left Byron will draw a play. Basically leaving 3/4 of the timeout for players to stand around doing nothing.

Kobe metta and julius sit at the end of the bench together talking strategy most of the time on the bench.

When Byron subbed Kobe out for Lou, Kobe was visibly unhappy and gave a few eyebrow raises

Gary Harris looks like anger from inside out

Hibbert is huge and Kelly is surprisingly big too

Mudiay has a pretty poor attitude, visibly moaning about a teammate dropping a pass for 2 plays. i thought he had a really bad game and that jameer was much better in the minutes he got.

Lou Williams is an extremely active player on the defensive end helping and rotating with a lot of energy, and hitting the defensive boards pretty aggressively

Kelli tennant is :Fire:

Julius falls asleep on weak side d every single time

Huertas has the most hilarious warmup routine full of stationary high knees and weird little stretches

full time:

spoke to mike trudell on my way out (he was sitting next to me all game) - I said "Byron's gotta go mike" and he gave a disappointed head shake. I think he knows.

hibbert and brandon bass got into a little squabble on the bench. bass is extraordinarily frustrated and knows he's playing like complete a**. hibbert went over to give him dap and said something, and bass rejected his high five. nick young had to step in and separate them. bass and hibbert later sat next to each other on the bench so seemed to be ok.

clarkson was extremely pissed off at the loss.

kobe bryant is done. will barton roasted him every time they were isolated 1 on 1. will. barton.

we are not going to win games on defense so we need to be playing our best offensive lineup, which right now, does not include kobe. dlo, clarkson, lou will, randle, hibbert are our best 5.

glad tarik black finally got burn, but he got way too much. he also took kelly and hibbert's minutes when he should have been taking bass'. denver won the game in the end on the offensive glass, which hibbert could have helped with tremendously. but byron refused to make any personnel adjustments whatsoever.

only adjustments i noted out of byron were 1 - to switch every screen, and then 2 - to play a 2-3 zone twice. the zone actually drew two turnovers both times it was used.

we ran a few actions that resulted in really nice looks - one was a loop for kobe coming off two picks from the baseline for an open midrange jumper. i wanted to see us run that over and over again but it was used once and then discarded for some reason.

referee #66 (haywoode workman - i looked it up) was absolutely atrocious this game. made at least 5 bad calls

our bigs can't finish around the rim.

lou williams thinks he's playing with derozan and terrence ross still. threw two ambitious lobs to brandon bass and tarik black respectively. neither of whom can get up.

russell would actively direct the rest of the team to where they were supposed to be in each half court set. he also delivered a number of passes that had me looking around to make sure everyone else saw what i saw. haha

[moonpie]

DX broke down the Mudiay/Russell matchup last night too, vid is in the link:

http://www.draftexpress.com/article/DAngelo-Russell-vs-Emmanuel-Mudiay-2015-16-NBA-Matchup-Video-5316

[dockingsched]

I thought the Byron hate peaked from the Lin fans last year, but the primadonna's groupies are pretty bad too.

I'm going to assume you are labeling Russell as the prima donna and anyone critical of Scott for how he's handling Russell a groupie, if I'm off a genuinely apologize and would ask for a clarification.

Having said that, the type of post quoted is poison to a board. There's really nothing constructive from that comment and just serves as a way to divide the posters on here in a way that creates hostility.

People have specifically been critical of Scott's rotation and offensive and defensive systems. People have mentioned lack of ball movement, inability to defend pnr, certain lineups being out there too long and certain players sitting too long, as well as Scott's track record for coaching bad defense. Instead of just calling it hate and taking a shot at those being critical like some random poster would do, at least add something of value or just hit delete and move on.

If your post was one fueled by emotion like many are during the game, that might excuse your lack of substance, but that's still not an excuse for attacking posters.

The board is already divided when mods are asking for Kobe to break a leg.

Real rich coming from you, after all yours posts lately have been all negative.

Nothing wrong with being negative when the real life situation with the team is currently quite negative. The tone will be specially emotionally charged during game threads. Game threads take are a bit different and should be treated as such like they've always been.
Name calling other posters though and labeling them groupies, don't know how that's acceptable.

[TyCobb]

The emotion should be grounded in game threads as well.

Take the backseat moderating elsewhere.

[Spens1]

fire Scott, what the actual hell was that. We won't win a game whole season if we can't defend against Denver

Clarkson was amazing though, 30 points, him and Randle are practically our only bright spots

Also Kobe needs a 3pt ban along with Russell (at the moment) and Williams (though he did work to get them free throws, so not too bad their), whoever our shooting coach is, fire him because he is useless

Also why the hell is Hibbert not capable of rebounds, he's 7'2, Hasheem Thabeet would be better at this stage for us, at least he'd get some boards, i would love it if we started Tarik Black (though that would mean Scott had some balls and imagination, neither of which he has)

We need to do something otherwise we'll be just terrible again, being terrible again shouldn't be an option, we should be at least mediocre (i'm not asking for a lot, 32 wins, is that too much to ask), if we can't do that, get rid of the doofus son and bring in someone who knows a thing or two about running a team from a basketball standpoint

Not sure what more you could expect of Hibbert, we all knew his shortcomings and he is still leading the team in defensive BPM by a healthy margin while running the break hard and finishing with more than his usual vigor.

want him to actually rebound like a 7'2 man should, not saying 15 boards a game but he should be able to rebound better than andrea bargnani at least

[aaron_gray]

The line on Mudiya was always that he was more ready to contribute now than the other guards in the draft because of his experience over seas... That was why he went so high in the draft in fact. So it shouldn't be a surprise that he's better than Russell right now...

I don't understand Scotts rotations, I don't understand the Defense being played right now... But It's at least 50% the players' faults. These guys are just not taking pride in performing on that end of the floor.

However:
Kobe
Lou
Young
Russell
Randle
Kelly

None of those guys are known as strong defensive players... Clarkson is OK but even he focuses more on the other end of the court, and Hibbert gets his rep on D from blocks... Ever since we got him, Indy fans have been telling us he's bad on PnR, slow, and falls down a lot instead of playing man D. He's vertical... That's pretty much it.
Bass was supposed to be good... At something...

These guys are all young and relatively injury free with the exception of Kobe, they need to be better... I think once a few guys takes it upon themselves to defend, that'll make Scott's job easier.

Lou has worked his ass off on D. He had a poor shooting night from the field, but props to him for doing his job and drawing a gajillion fouls out of thin air. Props to Black for coming in and hustling. Props to Hibbert for protecting the rim and streaking down the floor. Why Scott didn't go to his baby hook to abuse Denver's midget front court is beyond me. Props to Bass for showing Randle how to not play defense.

[Mirjalovic]

fire Scott, what the actual hell was that. We won't win a game whole season if we can't defend against Denver

Clarkson was amazing though, 30 points, him and Randle are practically our only bright spots

Also Kobe needs a 3pt ban along with Russell (at the moment) and Williams (though he did work to get them free throws, so not too bad their), whoever our shooting coach is, fire him because he is useless

Also why the hell is Hibbert not capable of rebounds, he's 7'2, Hasheem Thabeet would be better at this stage for us, at least he'd get some boards, i would love it if we started Tarik Black (though that would mean Scott had some balls and imagination, neither of which he has)
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We need to do something otherwise we'll be just terrible again, being terrible again shouldn't be an option, we should be at least mediocre (i'm not asking for a lot, 32 wins, is that too much to ask), if we can't do that, get rid of the doofus son and bring in someone who knows a thing or two about running a team from a basketball standpoint

Not sure what more you could expect of Hibbert, we all knew his shortcomings and he is still leading the team in defensive BPM by a healthy margin while running the break hard and finishing with more than his usual vigor.

want him to actually rebound like a 7'2 man should, not saying 15 boards a game but he should be able to rebound better than andrea bargnani at least

actually he has no problem with rebounding. He boxout and let his teammates to grab it, if that's not possible or enemies close with the ball, he grabs it.

[WVlakerfan]

Not sure what more you could expect of Hibbert, we all knew his shortcomings and he is still leading the team in defensive BPM by a healthy margin while running the break hard and finishing with more than his usual vigor.

want him to actually rebound like a 7'2 man should, not saying 15 boards a game but he should be able to rebound better than andrea bargnani at least

actually he has no problem with rebounding. He boxout and let his teammates to grab it, if that's not possible or enemies close with the ball, he grabs it.

To add to that i have seen several times where Randle actually fights Hibbert for the board. This was evident in the turnover the other night. Its better for him to just box out and let Randle clean the board.

[KIT]

Courtesy of 44TheLogo over at LG who was at the game last night:

was at the game w/ floor level seats

jotted down some notes

halftime:

The rotation is actually on a set time schedule. At set times players will simply go check themselves in without any coaches doing anything.

On timeouts the coaches huddle and Byron doesn't talk (madsen does most of the talking) and then with 10 seconds left Byron will draw a play. Basically leaving 3/4 of the timeout for players to stand around doing nothing.

Kobe metta and julius sit at the end of the bench together talking strategy most of the time on the bench.

When Byron subbed Kobe out for Lou, Kobe was visibly unhappy and gave a few eyebrow raises

Gary Harris looks like anger from inside out

Hibbert is huge and Kelly is surprisingly big too

Mudiay has a pretty poor attitude, visibly moaning about a teammate dropping a pass for 2 plays. i thought he had a really bad game and that jameer was much better in the minutes he got.

Lou Williams is an extremely active player on the defensive end helping and rotating with a lot of energy, and hitting the defensive boards pretty aggressively

Kelli tennant is :Fire:

Julius falls asleep on weak side d every single time

Huertas has the most hilarious warmup routine full of stationary high knees and weird little stretches

full time:

spoke to mike trudell on my way out (he was sitting next to me all game) - I said "Byron's gotta go mike" and he gave a disappointed head shake. I think he knows.

hibbert and brandon bass got into a little squabble on the bench. bass is extraordinarily frustrated and knows he's playing like complete a**. hibbert went over to give him dap and said something, and bass rejected his high five. nick young had to step in and separate them. bass and hibbert later sat next to each other on the bench so seemed to be ok.

clarkson was extremely pissed off at the loss.

kobe bryant is done. will barton roasted him every time they were isolated 1 on 1. will. barton.

we are not going to win games on defense so we need to be playing our best offensive lineup, which right now, does not include kobe. dlo, clarkson, lou will, randle, hibbert are our best 5.

glad tarik black finally got burn, but he got way too much. he also took kelly and hibbert's minutes when he should have been taking bass'. denver won the game in the end on the offensive glass, which hibbert could have helped with tremendously. but byron refused to make any personnel adjustments whatsoever.

only adjustments i noted out of byron were 1 - to switch every screen, and then 2 - to play a 2-3 zone twice. the zone actually drew two turnovers both times it was used.

we ran a few actions that resulted in really nice looks - one was a loop for kobe coming off two picks from the baseline for an open midrange jumper. i wanted to see us run that over and over again but it was used once and then discarded for some reason.

referee #66 (haywoode workman - i looked it up) was absolutely atrocious this game. made at least 5 bad calls

our bigs can't finish around the rim.

lou williams thinks he's playing with derozan and terrence ross still. threw two ambitious lobs to brandon bass and tarik black respectively. neither of whom can get up.

russell would actively direct the rest of the team to where they were supposed to be in each half court set. he also delivered a number of passes that had me looking around to make sure everyone else saw what i saw. haha

Great write up. Hibbert is really tall. I felt like he was as tall as I was sitting in row 5. Kelly looked very tall in person, too.

[Levity]

fire Scott, what the actual hell was that. We won't win a game whole season if we can't defend against Denver

Clarkson was amazing though, 30 points, him and Randle are practically our only bright spots

Also Kobe needs a 3pt ban along with Russell (at the moment) and Williams (though he did work to get them free throws, so not too bad their), whoever our shooting coach is, fire him because he is useless

Also why the hell is Hibbert not capable of rebounds, he's 7'2, Hasheem Thabeet would be better at this stage for us, at least he'd get some boards, i would love it if we started Tarik Black (though that would mean Scott had some balls and imagination, neither of which he has)

We need to do something otherwise we'll be just terrible again, being terrible again shouldn't be an option, we should be at least mediocre (i'm not asking for a lot, 32 wins, is that too much to ask), if we can't do that, get rid of the doofus son and bring in someone who knows a thing or two about running a team from a basketball standpoint

Not sure what more you could expect of Hibbert, we all knew his shortcomings and he is still leading the team in defensive BPM by a healthy margin while running the break hard and finishing with more than his usual vigor.

want him to actually rebound like a 7'2 man should, not saying 15 boards a game but he should be able to rebound better than andrea bargnani at least

next laker game, pay attention at the way hibbert goes at rebounds. he boxes the hell out of his man. both with his back to him, or like an offensive lineman facing him straight up. this allows teammates, especially randle, to get easy boards. sure, it would be great if hibbert could box out like he does, then attack for the rebound after . but hes not quick enough to do that. so just appreciate his approach to "team rebounding" Its a very similar trait to what marc gasol does with zbo. Thats very rare in todays "me first" NBA.