https://x.com/LakerTom/status/1893781808271253526
LAKERS STILL MUST UPGRADE STARTERS!
By 
February 23, 2025 5 Comments
Reader Interactions
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
A Lakers Fan Community
By February 23, 2025 5 Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
https://x.com/LakerTom/status/1893789097950650406
I don’t know what game you were watching Tom but the eye test showed that Rui was the best defender on the floor last night and JJ gave him the credit due calling him a Warrior. Doe is not as strong as Rui and he would not have been able to do what Rui did. And plus minus can be deceiving when Rui is getting his minutes against starters while Doe got many more minutes against a weak Nuggets bench with the Joker resting. I’m sure JJ takes that into consideration as well. Rui and Austin out scored Doe and Vincent 44 to 6. That also matters. Both Rui and Austin are superior offensive players over Gabe and Doe. And playing good enough defense to give us that number 1 defense over the last month. Our starting offense has a chance of being the most explosive starting 5 in the NBA while playing solid defense. It’s funny you heap praise on JJ yet you criticize his line ups and rotations. I don’t understand how he can be both. There is the old saying that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. And have a feeling JJ will stay with what’s working.
Oh by the way, Rui was the primary on Joker, with Vando getting a little run and LeBron had a couple of Minutes. Doe never was the primary on Joker.
Aloha, Michael.
I thought Rui did a great job but it was the Lakers team defense more than his individual defense that shut down Jokic and the Nuggets. I love Rui as a player and JJ certainly has a lot of confidence in him. He’s upped his game the last couple of weeks, including his defense. But he’s still not the overall defender that DFS is and both the eye test and the analytics confirm that.
I want more defense in the starting lineup and more offense off the bench. I think Reaves can play starter minutes and be a top candidate for 6MOY coming off the bench for the Lakers. I think we’re wasting Reaves by having him be third option. We would be better served by making sure we always had two of LeBron, Luka, and Austin on the court for every minute of every game. The best way to do that is have Austin come off the bench.
Because of how well Rui has been playing, I’m starting to think the best solution may be to replace Austin with Dorian. Dorian can defend shooting guards so suddenly we have a starting lineup that surrounds Luka with four plus defenders and a bench unit led by Austin Reaves and one of our superstars.
All of us have our favorite players but the Lakers need to have better offense-defense balance in both the starting lineup and bench unit. Big part of the solution could be starting Dorian and moving Austin to the bench. This way Rui continues to start and the Lakers starting lineup gets much bigger and better defensively.
This team has so many good players that it’s easy to think about how they could collectively be better. But I think we can all agree JJ knows what he’s doing.