Lakerholics

I entreat every Lakerholic to make sure to read this article as it may be the most important article I’ve written this year as it documents how the changes Frank Vogel made last night may have given the Lakers the blueprint for winning their 17th NBA championship. I’ve been tough on Frank Vogel for not making adjustments soon enough but could not be more impressed with key changes he made last night and hope he continues to keep an open mind going forward.

One thing that’s easy to forget is how the Lakers have improved every game they play against a team in these playoffs.

They lost Game 1 to Blazers, clearly in retrospect the kind of loss that was likely due to the bubble, and then took over, made adjustments, and cruised to a five-game triumph. The same with the Rockets, who also got a bubble win in Game 1. Then the Lakers put the crusher in the 4th quarter to win Game 2. Then put an even bigger shut down to win Game 3. The only two games out of 16 where the Rockets shot over 40% from deep but lost. Lakers now have the Rockets number. Like I said from the start, Lakers in 5!

Yes on differ guys against differ teams. Basically our 4th “D” was great.

Another interesting aspect of why the Rocket small ball style of play is unique is other teams go big or go small to try and force teams to matchup with them. When a team is beating them by going big, they’ll go small to try and force the other team to match them and take out their big men. Or when a team is beating them by going small, they’ll go big and try to force the other team to put in some bigs to counter their going small.

With the Rockets, they’re not trying to get their opponents to change how they’re playing. They want teams to stay big because that plays right into their hands. They believe they always have the advantage if the opponent goes small because that’s what they do and they have the best talent for that. Unfortunately for them, when the Lakers go small and play the same way as the Rockets do, they have a better team because of James and Davis. That’s why the Lakers need to play small against the Rockets.

Looking at the Lakers next two likely opponments, which are the Clippers in the Western Conference Finals and either the Celtics, Raptors, or Heat in the NBA Finals, there’s a strong case to be made to play those teams the same as they playeed the Rockets last night because all three of those teams like to clog the middle against the Lakers to prevent LeBron and AD from getting to the rim.

That’s why Frank changing styles for the Rockets is so important. It’s probably the right strategy against the Clippers, Celtics, Raptors, or Heat. Whomever we play from the East is also going to featre a stretch center who shoots the three-ball. Welcome to the new NBA.

This article will surely be controversial considering how polarizing Rondo is to Lakerholics. Gerald is already pulling his hair out and going crazy but I think McGee’s injury, Playoff Rondo’s appearance, and how the team played going small in the 4th may have opened the door for a starting lineup change Frank could accept…but maybe not. Maybe Frank comes back and starts Dwight for JaVale. It would fit with what has been a frustrating reluctance to make smart moves. Sad to think an injury to JaVale was the only thing that saved the day. What will Vogel do? Game 3 is critical to series.

I completely missed the announcement that JaVale had been injured in my apoplectic response to how JaVale started the second half, turning the ball over and allowing one of the three wide open threes that fueled a Rockets 9-zip run to start the second half. I mistakenly thought Frank had come to his senses. Anyway, never want to see a player get injured but this could be a blessing in disguise for the Lakers if it triggers Rondo moving into the starting lineup for McGee for the rest of this series.

It was great to see the Lakers take the Rockets best punch in the form of 22 made threes and over 40% shooting from deep and come back and shut them down in the 4th. Only 8 mintes of -9 plus/minus by McGee and a DNP by Howard opened the way for the Lakers to play small for 40 of the 48 minutes in the game. So I’m at least grateful Frank shut down Howard. Now he just needs to do the same with McGee for the rest of this series.

Looking ahead to the NBA Finals, has anybody noticed that the Heat have essentially been playing very much like the Rockets. Only difference is Bam is a little bigger than Tucker but they’ve been raining threes and playing small ball scramble defense. Another reason for Lakers to continue to experiment with more small ball lineups. I would like to see a Rondo, Green, LeBron, AD, and Morris lineup get some run. That could be a great closing lineup.

I was really worried about him and Caruso, but they outperformed my expectations! Credit where credit is do. Just DO IT again!

Sup Worthy,

How ya feel is valid.

He’s not the only one, most of social media, Basketball media, NBA head office, advertising do a great job themselves of de-emphasizing the importance of the Regular Season.

They’ve essentially turned the NBA into College Football.

The have and the have-nots.

I don’t like it, it’s oversimplification, it doesn’t take into account nuance like player development, improvement, team chemistry.

Why?

2 reasons come to mind

1. Financial

2. The Media as the 4th estate has become fat, tired and lazy.

No room for nuance. Everything is binary: good or bad, productive/lazy. Which leaves pretty much no room for thoughtful discussion.

Shows like PTI/First Take/Skip and Shannon are kettle corn for the hardcore fan. It doesn’t offer anything in the way of critical thinking at all.

Most of the time it’s got viral hits or stoking up furor over something or for these personalities to cut promos for their brand.

I can tell w/in 5 mins of a basketball convo who knows their stuff and who doesn’t.

Hey, Brad, I can understand why you might feel that way but I think what we’re seeing is an athlete in Rajon who has a preternatural mental ability to focus in the playoffs that enables him to elevate his game miles above how he normally plays and avoid the negative tendencies that deprecate his performances during the regular season.

The regular 82-game season is a grind for even the most highly motivated superstars. In many ways, the Bubble is the perfect venue for players like LeBron and Rondo which is why we’re seeing almost supernatural performances from them right now. Not only did they have almost five months off to recuperate but what amounted to just an eight game regular season.

What we’re seeing is the elevation of the clutch gene in players in the bubble. So I look to performances like Playoff LeBron’s blockfest and Playoff Rondo’s reemergence as great accomplishments rather than players dogging it during the regular season. These are superhuman feats that it would be impossible to maintain during an extended regular season so just cherish and enjoy them now.

There always are, of course, multiple ways a coach can adjust his offense and defense to counter a bad performance. My concern is Vogel having too much confidence in the lineups and style of play that got the Lakers top seed in the West to make any changes. That was an admirable trait during the regular season but could be a real liability in the playoffs.

But if the shots don’t fall and LeBron and AD still cannot find space to attack the rim, McGee and Howard still don’t contribute much at either end, the danger is the Lakers could go down 0-2 and only 27 out of 394 (6.4%) teams have been able to come back and win the series. That’s a hole the Lakers do not want to fall into and we all know the Rockets are likely to go crazy and rain made threes down on the Lakers in one of the games in this series so Vogel cannot dither and wait.

Eight-player rotation with four starters – LeBron, AD, Green, and KCP – and four reserves – Kuzma, Caruso, Morris, and Waiters (No Rondo) – playing 5-out sets on offense and a triangle and two zone on defense with the guards doubling Harden, the forward sticking with the corner shooters, and AD protecting the rim in the middle. That’s what Vogel should do to make sure the Bubble Lakers don’t become the Bubble Bucks.

Good read LT, have to admire your commitment to what is really a D’Antoni-esque style of coaching. There are definitely things I agree with in this article (play the players who produce, going 0-2 is bad, Vogel is unlikely to make the adjustments brought up in your article, and definitely that the Rockets will go nova from three at some point) I can’t imagine a world where Frank Vogel re-works the Laker offense between Friday night and tomorrow evening. Nor are we going to outright relegate players to the pine because they’re tall.

Where I think you’ll see changes are in the minutes played and with whom. It was foolhardy to trot out a never-played together-before-ever in the playoffs. Vogel has to realize that preseason ended almost a year ago and I think there’s a lot of that frustration embroiled in your write up and likely in a large number of Lakers fans, in general. However, this was always going to be an issue for the Lakers based on how late they acquired new players, the timing of COVID-19 and Avery Bradley opting not to play.

If we’re going to break down the minutes lets not preplan foul trouble. In an ideal Laker world Alex Caruso isn’t play 16 minutes. It’s closer to 25 and that adds a lot of defense and toughness that felt lacking in Game 1. That’s a bonus. I think you might also see less Kuzma and maybe even a little less Dwight (hard to imagine him playing much fewer than the 11 minutes he played on Friday night, tho).

Where I think you can save yourself some personal aggravation is in hoping Vogel changes the starting 5. I don’t get the feeling that he’ll change that at any point. It’s a respect thing, it’s what got us here (minus Avery bradley, of course) and to that point I truly thinl the only change woud be switching KCP out of the starting guard spot he currently inhabits. McGee is starting, it’s real hard for me to see that changing for Frank. KCP has flitted in and out of the starting line up (Rondo started 3 games this season) and I could see Rajon getting the nod for a couple reasons: to start the game off giving LeBron less duties as the primary distributor and getting a vet in after warming up.

I feel liek we alo need to do battle better at a mental level. Harden is annoyingly good player who adds a fair amount of drama because of his propensity to get whistles in his favor. That doesn’t mesh well with Dwight, KCP or Kuzma who get too into the refs for guys of their station. LeBron? Definitely, AD, defnitely, Rondo, OK sure. After that, let it go. They’re calling those fouls for James Harden and when they don’t he’ll go apoplectic. It’ll happen in at least one game. Dwight has a little more leash on this one than Kuz but all our hot head dudes need to figure out how to get over it and move on.

The main way we can improve our chances to win, I feel given what we know about our team and Frank Vogel, is to not so mcu double-down on playing big but focus on playing big better. Playing big better will negate a lot of the advantages we ceded to Housont in Game 1 and will put the emotional drama on Houston. P.J. Tucker has never agreed with a foul called on him in his life, same goes for a lot fo Houston. You have to attack that collapsing defense a lot smarter than we were able to on Friday and that doesn’t just mean chucking threes.

Having said that, we need to be better from three. The whole 5-out, triangle, whole new offense in a couple days thing is unrealistic. It ain’t happening. But guys like Danny Green, KCP and Kuzma need to be at least 35% as a group. If they’re all hitting it’ll really open up LeBron and AD’s game but at least one of them has to be hot in a quarter. That’s it. I think that, if AD and LeBron play more to type and we don’t get too into the refs and out of our identity it’ll be enough against most teams on most nights. In a way that’s exactly what the Bubble is: teams on a night. No fans, boring atmosphere, no smell of nachos. Weird.

All that’s cool but let’s all say it again: we’re going as far as Anthony Davis and LeBron James take us. They got outplayed, by Harden early and Westbrook late. That’s the Houston pattern. Everyone seems mystified that Harden takes a backseat late in games a lot. I’m not, the dude is tired and Russell Westbrook has the power of star inside of him. Not a TMZ star, a ball of hyper-hot gas exploding on an atomic level every second of it’s life. They’ll switch that pattern up, or try to, and that’s where we have to be quicker to adapt. We have to be like the freaking Borg in this series.

But, like you said, I’m not sure Frank has it in him or even that guys like AD or LBJ agree that those kind of changes to any of it need be made. For all we know this is exactly what those two guys have been asking for behind closed doors. We’ll likely never know. My hope is guys like Green and KCP produce, Caruso starys out of foul trouble and LeBron and AD show up for a full 48. I think it’s going to happen and we’ll see a sharpe, more in tune Laker squad tomorrow night.

This could be considered to be my apology article to Frank Vogel, which became inevitable after I reviewed the 5-player lineup stats for the starters over the 4-game win streak over Portland as well as the offensive, defensive, and plus/minus stats for all Lakers.

As Frank predicted and had faith, the shots fell and the team played great defense except for the last game, which was understandable and written off to human nature. I still have some concern about whether he’ll try to play McGee and Howard too much when we face stretch five centers but I have to trust the stats from back in March when we went small half the time against the Bucks and Clippers.

Of course, I don’t have a problem being wrong as I would much rather the Lakers win than I end up being right. Just don’t want to be right and have the Lakers lose. Good job, Frank. Glad you were right and I was wrong.

One of the risks of writing articles about the Lakers next playoff opponent before a series is over is you could be wrong and then you’ve done all this work for naught. One solution to avoid that outcome is to publish the article early. So, since the Lakers get some more time off and are taking the day off, here is my analysis of the Lakers and Rockets second round playoff series, should it happen.

I actually think the odds favor the Rockets winning the Game 7 in the series tomorrow. While I think the Lakers would have an easier time with the Thunder, I just don’t see them pulling off the upset although it would be sweet to see Chris Paul get revenge on Morey for trading him for Westbrook. No doubt CP3 clearly outplayed Russ yesterday. Paul went for the kill while Russs looked out of shape and not ready for prime time.

I won’t be disappointed if the Rockets win because I think they would finally force Frank Vogel to make changes. It’s interesting to see the coaches like Vogel who refuse to make changes do versus those like Nurse or Spoelstra who are willing and eager to adjust their lineups and rotations. Eric’s decision to start Dragic in the playoffs looks like a great move.

Looking across the league, it’s the teams in the East who have stretch five centers who are competing to get to the Finals: Milwaukee, Miami, Boston, and Toronto. Meanwhile, the best two teams in the West – Lakers and Clippers – are playing with traditional back-to-the-basket centers. Lakers might be better off having to face the Rockets to get ready for whomever is coming out of the East.

Anyway, love to hear what you think of my game plan for the Lakers versus the Rockets, whether that ends up to be the matchup or not. 3 > 2. Lakers need AD at the five.

Don’t count those eggs. Not only do i think we’d have a hard time containing Chris Paul should the Thunder advance but that either opponent is likely to push the series to a solid 6 games.

Now that the Rockets lucked out and managed to eke out the win over the Thunder, it looks like all my work on how the Lakers can beat the Rockets crazy small ball attack was not for naught .

In many ways, the Rockets are probably going to be mentally and physically exhausted just to get to the second round, not unlike how the Blazers were relieved just to make the playoffs after their arduous quest. They’ll surely have an uphill battle against the rested Lakers, who should take the series in 5 games.

I won’t deny I was rooting for the underdog Thunder to win and CP3 to get his revenge. Have to give kudos for Chris and the OKC coaches and players for a great series. Lakers should consider trading for CP3 to optimize LeBron’s last few years. He still is a bonafide NBA superstar.

Please give my article a read now that it’s become relevant. It outlines a solid blueprint for how the Lakers should play on offense and defense against the Rockets and what the traps are they should be careful to avoid. Let me know your comments below. Thanks.