The LeBron James - 21-22 Regular Season Thread - New Thread Soon Part 2

[tone wone]

Too harsh on Vogel. If the only problem with the team was offensive coaching they wouldn't look as bad as they do in the games Lebron played. He accounts for a high number of dud possessions. The margins would be different. They wouldn't even be struggling in games where Lebron and AD go off. This is new to the Lakers. Vogel was a terrible offensive coach in 20 and 21 and won games without breaking 100 points.

The problem is a dysfunctional roster with fancy names that give less than the sum of previous teams parts. Caruso and Matthews for all their unimpressive production just might be a higher impact duo for Lebron/AD/Vogel and title contenders in general than Carmelo, Westbrook (played really well against the knicks tonight but still not worth 50m in the Lakers setup) etc.

How am I too harsh on Vogel?

The shift from an defensive-first roster to an offensively slanted one is a direct response to multi-year offensive underperformance. An underperformance due to his crappy coaching. Now he no longer has the safety blanket of an elite defensive roster to cover up his crappy offense and he's floundering.

Its not his fault. He is who he is. The organization should've paired him with a strong offensive assistant when they hired him. They didn't and have tried ill-faited roster moves to compensate for that mistake.

Im honestly surprised that people don't see how talented an offensive team this is. They're not perfect and the fit's not great but to me the talent is real and obvious. Its just being wasted by subpar coaching.

[donnieme]

Too harsh on Vogel. If the only problem with the team was offensive coaching they wouldn't look as bad as they do in the games Lebron played. He accounts for a high number of dud possessions. The margins would be different. They wouldn't even be struggling in games where Lebron and AD go off. This is new to the Lakers. Vogel was a terrible offensive coach in 20 and 21 and won games without breaking 100 points.

The problem is a dysfunctional roster with fancy names that give less than the sum of previous teams parts. Caruso and Matthews for all their unimpressive production just might be a higher impact duo for Lebron/AD/Vogel and title contenders in general than Carmelo, Westbrook (played really well against the knicks tonight but still not worth 50m in the Lakers setup) etc.

How am I too harsh on Vogel?

The shift from an defensive-first roster to an offensively slanted one is a direct response to multi-year offensive underperformance. An underperformance due to his crappy coaching. Now he no longer has the safety blanket of an elite defensive roster to cover up his crappy offense and he's floundering.

Its not his fault. He is who he is. The organization should've paired him with a strong offensive assistant when they hired him. They didn't and have tried ill-faited roster moves to compensate for that mistake.

Im honestly surprised that people don't see how talented an offensive team this is. They're not perfect and the fit's not great but to me the talent is real and obvious. Its just being wasted by subpar coaching.

Alright this is going to be a long post. Imo their team is nothing fantastic offensively. Actually been challenged for saying it's a good team but even I don't think it's great in its current form. The roster is rich in talent but severely lacks functionality or lineup practicality without both of Lebron and AD on the floor. If you had to design 5 lineup combinations with this roster you'd barely get to number 3 without running into some low functioning 3 guard plus Carmelo lineups or Westbrook+paint cloggier lineups.

A lot of the talent is also crazy redundant or the same in roleplayer archtype. They even have the same deficiencies. You can't feature many of them heavily in a playoff rotation unless you want to become the Blazers. Even Westbrook and Rondo are somewhat redundant in spacing and defensive needs. Then Carmelo, Monk and Ellington are basically the same guy at 3 different positions. The former 2 aren't particular high iq in decision making, take some questionable shots that affect offensive efficiency and on the other end all 3 are some of the worst help defenders in the league. There's also the small issue that Carmelo has no real position on defense and is supposed to be their primary backup 3/4 for 15-20 mins a game.

All the redundancies lead to a team that has very little adjustments and is often just swapping similar players on its substitutions. But most unfortunate is these guys are low iq, low motor and bring none of the little things high end roleplayers on title teams need to bring. Never seen a team turn basic rotation and boxout situations into rocket science. You have guys wandering off of corner shooters on final possessions. Then they are always a couple empty possessions from having their deficits erased so have to shoot a disgustingly high percentage the entire game just to maintain any lead.

Post is feeling tedious already, maybe I'll finish this assessment later but the point is I don't think it's a great team at all.

[McBubbles]

Too harsh on Vogel. If the only problem with the team was offensive coaching they wouldn't look as bad as they do in the games Lebron played. He accounts for a high number of dud possessions. The margins would be different. They wouldn't even be struggling in games where Lebron and AD go off. This is new to the Lakers. Vogel was a terrible offensive coach in 20 and 21 and won games without breaking 100 points.

The problem is a dysfunctional roster with fancy names that give less than the sum of previous teams parts. Caruso and Matthews for all their unimpressive production just might be a higher impact duo for Lebron/AD/Vogel and title contenders in general than Carmelo, Westbrook (played really well against the knicks tonight but still not worth 50m in the Lakers setup) etc.

How am I too harsh on Vogel?

The shift from an defensive-first roster to an offensively slanted one is a direct response to multi-year offensive underperformance. An underperformance due to his crappy coaching. Now he no longer has the safety blanket of an elite defensive roster to cover up his crappy offense and he's floundering.

Its not his fault. He is who he is. The organization should've paired him with a strong offensive assistant when they hired him. They didn't and have tried ill-faited roster moves to compensate for that mistake.

Im honestly surprised that people don't see how talented an offensive team this is. They're not perfect and the fit's not great but to me the talent is real and obvious. Its just being wasted by subpar coaching.

You're talking out of your behind. The reason for their change from a defensive to an "offensive" team is a result of no one on the organisation having a god damn clue what they're doing as it pertains to roster building.

The year they won the championship they were the 11th best offence in the regular season, and the 2nd best offence in the post season. What offensive underperformance fueled by crappy coaching is this?

In 2021 they had the 24th ranked offence yes, but LeBron and AD combined to miss 63 games and never played healthy after they game back.

Then you have not even 20 games of this year in which LeBron has missed time again and in which their roster has been very injured, and once again, is just kinda ****.

I'm not going to pretend like Vogel is a great offensive coach because he isn't, and he has some ridiculously stupid **** line ups, but no one takes their #3 and #1 defence, and thinks "hm, this won't do. Why are we clearly reaping the rewards of a defensive coach with defensive role players? We need to play to our coaches weakness and give our defensive minded coach offensive players in order to fix our offensive shortcomings that didn't exist when we were healthy, thereby becoming better at offence, worse at defence and at absolute best, make a lateral move "

[Baski]

:lol: You gotta wonder what LeBron thinks of the team at this point. I can't even imagine being in his position where he knows they can't win the title but then he can't just give up. There's no avenue to go and talk to Pelinka about making changes because everybody tradeable is on a minimum contract and everybody else getting traded would just look absolutely terrible. He's trapped in a situation where he has to give his all to just not end in complete failure and it's all his fault. A young player can handle that kinda disappointment, but as a vet nearing retirement it must be soul-crushing.

THT is 20 years old on a value contract.. Not sure how he's perceived around the league but I'm sure most bad teams would be intrigued by him. Myles Turner, Jerami Grant, and Harrison Barnes are players that could be acquired for the combination of THT and Nunn. Detroit, in particular, makes sense as a trading partner. Grant is turning 28 this season and the team doesn't have any hope of being good for the foreseeable future. THT might have some overlapping skills with Cade and Killian but he's a young player with loads of potential.

Really, trading THT is the only hope the Lakers have to tangibly improve their odds at winning. You can hope to make some small moves on the margins but those won't address their biggest weaknesses.

Yeah but he's not going anywhere. I'm tempted to believe that noone in that team is going anywhere this season. Not even Vogel.

[thebigbird]

Every injury update I see on Anthony Davis makes him sound like a 12 year old trying to stay home from school.

Read on Twitter

?s=21

[cpower]

Every injury update I see on Anthony Davis makes him sound like a 12 year old trying to stay home from school.

Read on Twitter

?s=21

he is averaging 1.8 injuries per game

[toodles23]

Lebron looking really slow tonight. He had Turner then Sabonis switched onto him on back to back possessions and couldn't get by either of them and had to take contested stepback 2s.

[Greyhound]

The Lakers are a game under .500 and AD is being load managed.

LOL

[nzahir]

LMFAO this team

Need to see some move made in December/Jan

This is a joke

The injury may have hampered Lebron again, looks like this is just who he is now

On some nights he can still be the best in the world, but not on most on nights and it will likely be in spurts, not consistent

Luckily Lebron's passing and pace control is still at the top

[IG2]

This is so frustrating. You could tell he busted his ass off during the summer and came into the season in terrific shape. The numbers may not have been great due to adjusting to Westbrook, but physically it's the best he's ever looked in the regular season as a Laker.

Now after the abdominal injury? Ugh he might as well be 57 years old out there. So damn limited. Who knows how long it will take him now to get back to normal.

[IG2]

3 straight 3's to close out the half

[MisterHibachi]

THT has been really really bad past few games. I think I saw somewhere he reinjured his thumb a few games ago. But a lot of these are just mental mistakes, especially on defense.

[MisterHibachi]

Russ is a god damn idiot. Why dive for that when it's gonna be back court

[MisterHibachi]

There are zero shooters in this lineup. Wtf Vogel

[dreamshake]

Must be frustrating to make the effort to block a shot just for Russ to use the resulting possession to shoot an airball from the free throw line lol

[Fadeaway_J]

Russ is a god damn idiot. Why dive for that when it's gonna be back court

That was really daft.

[MisterHibachi]

If Monk was like 15% better on defense, he would be such an elite role player because he's money on offense as a secondary/tertiary guy

[MisterHibachi]

For all his faults, Russ has been really good for his standards past few games.

[MisterHibachi]

I don't know what Bradley brings to the table over Bazemore. At least Baze has more size. Bradley isn't that much better on defense.

[nzahir]

For all his faults, Russ has been really good for his standards past few games.

He has been pretty decent and I have been a huge critic of his

I wish he stopped taking awful shots though

He should never take any 3 that isn't a wide open catch and shoot

Vogel needs to do better with the lineups

We are too small, I would even give Bazemore time with Bron back