5 THINGS

It’s been awhile but the three centerpieces the Lakers envisioned leading a ragtag squad of vet minimum deals to an NBA championship took the floor together for the first time in a long time. Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and Anthony Davis led the Lakers to a needed win over the Nets who were without Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Paul Milsap and Joe Harris. The Lakers know the injury routine and did the right thing by not allowing the Nets to get anyone other than James Harden going. Here’s hoping the trio stays healthy and grows together over the rest of the season and start finding a way forward.

1. A starting five that makes sense to me. If you look at the total points scored by the starting 5 (69) and the fact that 33 of them were scored by one man (LeBron James) that the line up is unbalanced. While that could prove true on offense defensively this line up works. Taking Ariza out and inserting Stanley Johnson at the 4 allows LeBron to play his preferred position of small forward. With a front court of Davis, Johnson and James you have size, strength and speed. All three can guard 1-5, with help, and it allows Russ and Bradley to work on forcing guys away from their strengths on the perimeter. Nobody stops a good NBA player, you take something away. Bradley is good, if not still great, at doing that. What he’s been missing, as has the entire team, has been an elite defender in his prime in the paint. Dwight isn’t that guy anymore, he needs to be used in match ups that allow him to be bruising and vertical, he’s not as mobile as he was even two seasons ago. COVID hasn’t helped him, either, as he looks like he’s getting winded quicker than I’ve ever seen him.
2. Ariza’s DNP-CD. I applaud Trevor for being a gamer and going out and trying his hardest. It’s not his fault he’s old, it happens to everyone. But Trevor needs to work on his shot off the floor and get his legs back in some meaningful way before he sees a bigger role. Spot minutes up until the All Star break, garbage time minutes and role of “break glass in case of emergency” are what we need from him right now. I think he can be helpful in certain situations in a 7 game series and his presence in the locker room as both an NBA champ and vet is useful. On the court his game needs a lot of work and it feels unfair to demand a lot of him right now. Keep your head up, keep working, that shot will come back and hopefully you can make some plays in the playoffs when your number is called.
3. Malik Monk microwave scorer. While I think Monk works as a starter it’s probably better for the team if he comes off the bench in a role like we saw last night. The ebbs and flows of an NBA game are real, when starters go out and the bench come in the dynamics of the game change. Guys let down a lot of the time when they see a superstar take the pine for a break. Monk can exploit those moments better than any other Laker off the bench right now. Maybe Nunn could as well, he hasn’t played and who knows how long it’ll take for him to get up to game speed when he does. Frankly, we can’t keep waiting for guys anymore anyhow. Monk was the second leading scorer for the team off the bench in a performance that reminded me of super sub Lou Williams. One of three Lakers to reach double figures in scoring with 22 and he shot the ball great. If w can count on Monk for something akin to this every game, maybe get some spot starts depending or if a guy needs a game off or something, we have some pieces on the board we can start to count on consistently.
4. Gotta love Melo. They’re not all smart or good shots, he’s borderline absurd when it comes to shot selection honestly, and his defense can be more of a grabbing pushing kinda thing but…I don’t care. You need a gunner with no conscience and with Anthony you get that. There are things he doesn’t bring to the table and I get that, not every player is perfect…well, maybe LeBron is…but other than that you get warts of one kind or another. That’s where the coach comes in and, as we’ve seen, Frank may not be the best regular season coach but is great at adjustments in 7 game series.
5. The young guys. I don’t count Monk in this one, he’s in his 5th year. THT and Austin Reaves are whom I consider to be the young guys and are what will potentially be the building blocks of a future version of the Lakers or chips to cash in on a trade. I don’t see much happening simply because our best offer is essentially a salary dump. Monk and Nunn don’t come with any kind of Bird Rights and will be difficult to retain in the summer for almost every team, THT has honestly taken a pretty large step back in his game and doesn’t feel worth the price we’re paying for him. Reaves has hit the rookie wall, at least in terms of his shot-making ability although he still has a lot of hustle. Those are the trading chips. The ghosts of Kent Bazemore and DeAndre Jordan aren’t making a GM any more excited than any of us get when we hear their names. I actually like Kent and am glad he’s on the team, I still see him having an impact at some point on down the line and both he and DAJ have accepted their fate with grace and style. But including either in a trade is ridiculous, honestly, nobody wants those guys. Reaves and Monk move needles but we’ll need them so unless it’s for someone who improves the defense and the offense you have to say no.

Another good test against a more complete team looms in Philly tomorrow. We need to keep winning now, the Clippers have found a groove, Denver is playing better and better, the Timberwolves are playing their best basketball in years and Dallas has caught fire. That’s the competition right now. We need to win 30 games before we lose 27, obviously the fewer the losses the better. Need to move up the .500’s towards a .600 winning percentage if we want to be taken seriously and create the foundation for a winning culture this season. Treading water is no longer an option.

Until the Lakers can figure out how to play defense nothing else matters. One could choose to quibble over this or that but it truly does not matter. When you give up 50+% shooting from everywhere, allow the other team to just dominate you in the paint with no resistance, and in general play without energy you will lose the game. Every time. That, Lakerholics, is exactly what happened today.

1. Compete. Written that word too much this season. Lakers did not show up ready to compete which is inexcusable on multiple levels. From the coaches to the Gatorade person, show up with some kind of intention that you will be competing. Play with energy, focus and intent to win. Showing up is not enough, I don’t care what the resume’ has on it. Lazy 35 foot shots, often quite early ion the shot clock, are not a recipe for a success and certainly not a comeback. Our screen roll coverages are a joke right now. Compete boys or just pack it up and save us all the drama.
2. Three point game is not our strength. Hasn’t really been all season long. Not sure what Rob was thinking this summer but it’s obvious it isn’t working in terms of “improving” the offense. Our offense stinks. We don’t get the specialists shots which begs the question why we play them at all? If you’re not going to get Wayne going from the outside why are we playing him at all? At least when we had Wes you could argue he had a presence on defense. No, the three ball is not the weapon the Lakers need to focus on right now. Frankly, the offensive end isn’t where the largest issues lie, either.
3. Too many donuts. Sometimes I really do wonder what this team works on between games. If it’s defense I don’t see it translating on the court. If it’s specific shots we don’t see them executed on the floor. Ariza, in his 17th season, ought to know where he can make a shot from. Donut. Dwight played 11 minutes…donut. Also couldn’t defend the paint against a stream of Miami players. Reaves is a rookie and has had an uneven distribution of minutes but also brought a donut to work.
4. LeBron continued his 25+ point streak!!! Congrats on your Spirit award, Mr. James. We need more on defense at this point. Especially when you play center which isn’t really working anymore.
5. A late push? Cute. Seen it this season and it’s Fool’s Gold. We’re mediocre, at best, and simply not good enough to rely on a few minutes of “Wow…we’re getting our asses kicked tonight…again. Time to play hard guys!!!” every few games. Had they played like that all game literally everything would have been different. They didn’t. Show up consistently. Play hard consistently. Don’t worry about streaks, stats, or the record books. Be better.

Getting AD back will help a little but we have a lot of issues. Westbrook’s fit, a lack of players with anything resembling defensive acumen or pedigree, and a general lack of competitive spirit from the tip. Late rallies should be needed every so often not once a week. We can’t even reliably beat bad teams, which has been the biggest issue, in all honesty. Had we shown an ability to beat inferior teams and come up short against top teams that would be one thing. We play down to everyone, get up for no one and spend a lot of time preaching patience. Well, we’re coming up on 2/3’s of the way through the season. Patience and time are ever-dwindling luxuries.

It was certainly more of a contest than one might have expected. But, given the Lakers’ struggles against young teams this season, the win was more than enough. Solid contributions from across the board, LeBron’s 25+ ppg streak continued, and for one night more things went right than went wrong.

1. Westbrook bounces back from benching. You don’t play at the level Russ has without being able to turn the page on a bad game. Or two. Or…well, you catch my drift. The fit might not be the best. A mid-season trade seems all but impossible (to me, anyway) and so there remains but one thing to do: figure out how to make it work the best that it can. We’ve seen it in glimpses but it hasn’t found a “sustain” feature, yet. Maybe the long road trip can be the lab where that happens, away from the home crowd pressure, away LA, and among the team we would all like to see play better.
2. Ariza better on defense, still looking for his shot. I thought this was Trevor’s best game of the season. He was able to better execute our game plan on D which is essential for making this team work. He also took the open shots that came his way, most of them just didn’t go in. That’s OK, for now, after not playing for almost the entire season his legs aren’t where they need to be. Seeing him execute the defensive game plan better is a step in the right direction and something we need more of. Playing with LeBron a lot helps his +/-.
3. LeBron keeps playing at a high level. For my part I’d prefer if LeBron keep it to 5 3 PT FGA/game. Unless he’s hot we really shouldn’t see too many 30+ foot shots or early shot clock threes. The corner three he hit off a pass was a great example of the kind of three point shots I think we want LeBron and our specialists shooting more of. LeBron has a 16 game streak of 25+ points going currently and he kept that up against the Magic last night as they couldn’t contain him. Especially in the second half when we went back to him at the 5. There are definitely some teams/match ups that I think Dwight is the better option for. Back-to-backs, as well, I think would be a situation where I would like to see LBJ at the 5 in half closing scenarios. Against teams that are either unsure about their low post identity or don’t have a strong presence in the paint it’s OK. The biggest issue with LeBron at the five is a lack of a rim deterrent and rebounding. Figure out how to balance that out, or when to play Dwight, and this should work better.
4. Carmelo’s road game shows up. It’s been a season long issue. Not only just with Melo, although his home/road splits are fairly dramatic, but with the whole Laker bench. They show up at Crypto, not so much on the road. Carmelo showed us some vintage basketball and then got hot from three, as well, to the tune of 23 points. While the rest of the bench didn’t have quite the same impact (only Monk and Johnson managed to score 10+ points) they all did their part to help bring him the win. I’ll add that it looks to me like Reaves is hitting a bit of a rookie wall as both his defense and outside shot have leveled off a lot lately. THT had his traditional low-impact game after a big one and Johnson continues to play at a steady level off the bench which is great to see since that is where his role would be should he stick past the 10-day.
5. Better defense is a must. We still have to be a lot better on that end of the floor. We simply lack the firepower, especially without AD, to just outscore teams. Sending the young Magic to the line 29 times and letting them score in the paint like they did just can’t continue to happen. Against one of the worst teams in the Association we eked out a win. We won’t be so fortunate against even mediocre teams, like we saw in Indy. Against top teams we’ll get blown out. So something has to happen. If we can outscore teams with LeBron at the five every single games than that could be the answer but the problem is we don’t. We sieve paint points and rebounds while not creating quality shots of our own. So, if we’re going forward with James at the five he, too, has to adjust his game to operate closer to the rim and not further from it. We need to see us not miss the backdoor cut…repeatedly…like we did last night. Above all we need to find it within ourselves to play a higher quality of defense. If not this is done and it’s done now. There will be no late season surge or player we get back that alters that identity. If the guys playing now can’t figure it out it’s likely we’ll see an entirely new team in training camp. Again. For the third season. After winning a title…using defense.

Next up is a very early game against the Miami. Never a good combo. But the Lakers won’t have to leave the state of Florida so maybe they can get they can get acclimated to the EST vibe and come out with some intensity. Miami has powered it’s way to 3rd in the EC among a slew of injuries to key players. Sound familiar? However, that team takes the defensive end a lot more seriously and there is no question that Spo has the team’s attention. So, we’ll see. I don’t have high hopes we can win, to be honest, but if we can get some good play off the bench and James and Westbrook can be as efficient as they were against the Magic we have a shot. I suppose that’s the best this version of the Lakers can muster right now.

It’s funny because I didn’t even realize they had taken Russ out. I watched the same poor execution on both ends I had been watching all game. Guys got blown by, the defense is just so slow to react. Guys couldn’t hit shots, late game offensive execution being a season long issue at this point. All of that is to say, Frank taking Russ out didn’t matter. Nothing improved, we stayed the same: mediocre. At best.

1. Ariza has been awful. In his 11 games this season Trevor has been anything but the small-ball savior some had hoped he would be. For myself I was always more than a little dubious that a 36 year old with multiple injuries over the last couple of seasons was to be counted on for much of anything. This has sadly been the case. He’s shooting a career worst 37.1% from the floor, a decent 37.9% from three (but takes only 2.6/game) and his intangible impact has been borderline non-existent. Last night he dropped a donut albeit in only 15 minutes so it’s hard to pin the loss on his meager contribution. This is the problem you begin to have when over 1/3 of your roster is over 33: slow, slow slow. Slow and methodical can work in the playoffs but not so much in the regular season. If we’re going to start Trevor and he’s going to soak up this many minutes from Monk and even Reaves we need more.
2. Play Dwight more. Give the man 20 mpg to work with. Don’t keep it match up based, or at least give him a little more leash to to run with. Dwight, who had been effective keeping a lid on Sabonis early although not at stopping the flow of paint points scored on us, played fewer minutes than Ariza. But if we drop Ariza from the rotation, play LBJ at the 4 and bring Monk back into the starting 5 I think that makes more sense on almost every level except for the “I dunno, can TA play better with even more minutes?” level. Dwight is also currently tied with Nate Thurmond at 14,464 rebounds for 10th on the All Time list. Small ball works with LeBron and shooters sometimes, it’ll work better with AD on the floor. In order to give our defense the best shot it can have we need a guy who knows to defend the paint better and let him loose. When AD returns his role can go back to something like this, which makes sense. But we both need to save some wear and tear on LeBron and up our presence on D.
3. Awful from three. I’m sure Frank will say something about “the law of averages” or that he “liked the shots they just didn’t go down” but this is a common theme with the Lakers now. Poor three point shooting, and more importantly, not finding ways to get the guys we brought in to do that quality shots. Honestly it would have been a lot worse save for Westbrook’s uncharacteristic good night from beyond the arc (he went 4-6, the rest of the team went 7-28). I don’t expect this to change mid-season, post-season or next season. Frank is not the coach for a volume three point shooting team. We need to figure out how to be the dominant paint scoring team and be better at keeping a lid on the other team’s three point shooters. That’s the only solution that makes sense to me at this point.
4. Defensive stopper. I think we need the best perimeter defender we can find. We need someone who can excel at being the point of attack and it’s not anyone currently on the roster. No offense to any current Laker but they all, to a man, routinely get blown by, give up play to a dominant hand, and get lost on screens and switches. Nobody except undrafted rookie Austin Reaves is able to consistently draw charges, nobody at all is fighting through screens and it often looks like we’re not talking on defense. This is on Vogel and the team leaders.
5. Nowhere to go but awwww F#$% that. This is what we are right now. We need AD back and playing at a high level on both ends. I think we need to trade THT (and if we can include him w/o him playing minute 1 this season) Nunn for a defensive ace and I don’t care what else they bring to the table. We need to stop guard penetration into the paint and we need to stop the layup line at the rim after the game has started. I think we have the scoring, even if we lose THT, in-house to play at a high enough level to compete better. But the defense will not be repaired with the guys we have now. We’re either big and slow or small and slow, we’re not quick to the ball, we don’t rebound at a high level. Those are the death of anyone’s playoff dreams.

Kudos to THT for a bust out game. Call me if he does it for a month. No more spirit awards from me this season. This is getting sad and that’s the nicest way I can frame it.

Hey man it takes a village. Frank Vogel, reportedly on the hot seat once again, trotted out a very Frank Vogel starting five. If he’s going down he’s going his way. Turns out it was the guys who didn’t start that ended up having the larger impact but I expect this look to solidify over the course of the rest of the season with a couple key differences. Regardless it worked out, against a top team at that, for at least one night.

1. LeBron’s apology. While he didn’t get 40 like he predicted on social media The King was still the force we needed him to. While not his best showing in terms of efficiency there is rarely a time where I question LeBron’s effort or shot selection. Like all the greats they’ve earned a dud game here or there. SO, while not a standout game where he scored 40 or even a continuation of his 30+ point tear this was a solid game from James. Which was all we needed.
2. Russell’s dunk. Honestly, and I’m not trying to be a downer or anything, I though Russ could have been called for an offensive foul when he used Golbert’s shoulder to get that extra lift that allowed him to throw it down. Same way i though Blake Griffin’s “iconic” dunk over Pau Gasol should have been an offensive foul. I guess there’s a question of did Rudy foul Russ first and everything was game after that or whatever but the point is that was something I think the whole team needed. Especially Russ. He puts up a stern façade and his demeanor rarely shifts on the court except to seemingly get gloomier, but this was a long time coming.
3. Stanley’s big game off the bench. This is the role he needs to carve out on this team. While a case can be made for putting together a starting line up that has all our best, fastest horses in it I think we’ll see more of what we got last night going forward. Ariza stunk, Howard was OK, Bradley was fine. But they’re all old and it makes sense that, if they are to be used, that we use them when they’re warmed up and not ask them to get going midway through the first half or what have you. Get warm, go play. That leaves journeyman Johnson to come off the bench and find his groove. I think this better suits his talents. Let’s him get going against other guys off the bench and if he rolls hard there maybe be an impact player when the game matters.
4. What can we take away from this? As we have all learned and espoused there seems to be no corner this team will be turning. One potentially statement or season-altering game on a Monday can be wiped away by a dud against Indy tomorrow night. If we put together a nice string of 10-15 or so games I’ll look back to the game that started it all and, with the benefit of hindsight, and say “Hey look! It was THAT game that started it all!”. Because to do otherwise is fruitless at this point.
5. The trade scenario. Reaves, Monk and THT all had great games off the bench. All three are likely trade sweeteners since we don’t have a ton of picks in this decade to add. I don’t think the minimum deals of the likes of DeAndre Jordan or Kent Bazemore are moving anyone’s needles. So, with that in mind and with the news that annual Laker trade target Myles Turner is out for an extended time with a stress reaction in his foot, is this the time to trade for him? We also had some good and bad news on the injury front with AD cleared to ramp up and Nunn set back again with pain in his knee. At this point I’ll be surprised if Nunn plays this season, I think he’s likely to get surgery to see what’s going on, clean up the knee, whatever he needs to do to get back on the floor. It’s not a guarantee he’ll ever wear his Laker uni. Could we do a deal for Turner with THT, Nunn and one of Reaves or Monk as the sweetener and actually keep our pick? Is it worth it to our theoretical title hopes this season? I have been pretty dour for all the trade enthusiast’s as I continue to be more of the opinion that we won’t do any in-season deals and not less. But the injury to Turner opens an odd kind of door. One that makes getting a player that can actually play back in a deal for him look a little differently. Also that teams looking for help now will start to look elsewhere leaving us in a position of possibly being able to swoop in and get Myles on the team. I think that all parties involved will wait for more definitive reporting but it is a curious case.

We need wins. Doesn’t matter how they come. If we need to play the octopus that predicts world cup victories at 2 guard or the mule that kicks field goals from the Disney movie so be it. Can’t lose the winnable games anymore and need to eke out some tough ones, too. Otherwise this is done.