Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

Thank you Murray. It was nice seeing you suck for once, instead of turnig into prime Kobe when playing us.

 

Lakers got lucky Murray didn't turn into prime Kobe like he always does against the Lakers. Can't count on Murray to play that awful again.

Gordon also seems to always play great against the Lakers.

And man, Jokic is so freakin good it's ridiculous. It seems everything he does out there just works out to his favor. By far the most talented center in the league right now. I think Wemby's an amazing player but I would still pick Jokic over Wemby for the next five years.

 

Had an insane day and didn't get to start watching this until 9:30 PST. I successfully avoided any news of the game. Fer crissakes! What. A. Game.

We were up 17 and looking great, but did what I feared would happen. And for once a lot of it was just DEN being insanely good, especially the passing of Joker. We go down 8 at one point and I'm thinking: we still played a pretty damned good game.

We take the lead! DEN re-takes the lead. Hardaway, Gordon and Cam J all hitting corner 3s.

I'm at a loss for words...this was one of the best regular season Laker wins that I can remember...and to those of you comin' in late: I saw the 1971-72 Lakers team that went 69-13 and won 33 straight games. I've seen basically every game since then. I've had my heart broken a lot in recent years and was ready to concede this season...until we beat the Knicks, Wolves and Nuggets recently, largely on the team buying in on intense defensive effort.

In the first half, Joker threw a ball behind his head to a man cutting for a hoop that was the play of the game...until 5 secs later, when AR rifled a pass off his hip from 27 feet to Ayton for a lob-slam. Then...Marcus hit a big 3, Ayton blocked a Jokic shot, the 41 year old dove for the ball to secure possession, AR somehow pulled off the magic of hitting the 1st FT, missing the 2nd on purpose, got his own rebound and hit the game-tying shot. Then Luka hits the game-winner with 0.5 left in OT. Oh my lawd.

Lakers win 127-125 in OT in a game I'll never forget. Felt like a WCF game, but we have 15 more regular season games.

8 days ago I thought we might win one round in the playoff, but maybe not. Now? I have no idea what the ceiling is.

Anyone who paid whatever to see the game at the Crypt got their money's worth, that's for damned sure.

 

Lakers hold on to keep it a tie and go to OT

And then Luka saves the day

Huge win and mental edge to know we can beat the Nuggets

Smart with a big game 21 pts 3 reb 2 ast 5 stl 1 blk

Add in his defense and he ended up +16

 

One more thing

Murray was 1-14

Not going to get that very often

 

I’m going to go all “Office Space” on my DVR. Of course, it chose this game to defy me!
Starting watching my normal 30 minutes in, so I can skip commercials and free throws. Saw that the idiot box didn’t start recording, so I missed most of the first. Made sure I hit record, then watched until the end of the third because I was exhausted from running the pup at the beach.
Got back from church today, turned on the Telly and of course, it didn’t record again!!!
I had to settle for the YouTube highlights reel.
I’m still happy we won and actually think we may even make the WCF now.

 

I actually re-watched the entire game very late last night. Yea, Murray couldn't hit the broad side of a barn but a lot of it was our defense.

My gawd it was one thing after another. I had forgotten that Luka was fouled on a 3 with us 3 down and he actually hit all 3. That when Bron dove onto the ball and Jamaal tied him up, Jamaal won that jump ball...only for Gordon to handle it near mid-court, where Marcus knocked it away for a breakaway layup with 46 secs left in the 4th to put us up 1 after we were down 7 after Gordon hit a corner 3 with 3:49 left.

Last 15 secs of regulation:
I see this sequence as all "one thing": AR drives to the rack and Jokic makes an incredible play by knocking it away with 15 secs left and us down 2; Luka fouling Gordon with 9.9 left and he misses the 1st, makes the 2nd, we're down 3 and JJ burns his last timeout. Nugs only need to foul for at most 2 FTs. And Lakers take it in and AR gets fouled immediately by Spencer Jones. He makes the 1st: Lakers down 2. AR makes the 2nd: Lakers down 1 and it looks dark. Nugs timeout. Rui fouls Cam Johnson with 6.4 left, who makes 'em both: Lakers down 3 with 6.4 left and no timeouts. Bron briefly turns his back to the ref before he has to inbound the ball 94 feet from the hoop. Full-court press, Bron hits AR in the frontcourt and he's immediately fouled by Cam Johnson with 5.2 left, us down 3. AR hits the first; we're down 2 and now it looks over because we AR has to pull off the Hail Mary of basketball: missing the FT on purpose in the desperate hope you can get the board and make a 2-point shot to force OT...which he does. INSANE!

 

I'm going to say something because I've seen it be rehashed multiple times now regarding Murray.

YES, he had a horrible game, probably his worst game of his career.

Yes, he's not goin to play like that again especially against us.

HOWEVER, we need to caveat this with the play of Gordon/Cam/Hardaway/Bruce Brown. Because of Murray's play, the Nuggets actually went away from him and started going more to those guys, and those guys all delivered well above their season averages. Has Gordon historically killed us? Yes he has. HOWEVER...I think Gordon hitting five 3's and the degree of difficulty on each of those 3's? That's not happening again imo. Ditto on Cam Johnson - he has been horrible this year and I'd say this was probably his best game as a Nugget. So Murray going cold actually changed the strategy offensively for the Nuggets where they started going to other guys and heck, some of these plays that Gordon made were straight up ISO plays. So I think even if Murray goes off next time we play them....it'll come at the expense of the other guys that played WELL above their average, so it doesn't necessarily mean the Nuggets are going to win by default of Murray playing well.

What an insane game though man. Felt like we died and came back like 10x. We hit so many big shots it's insane. It was nice to finally pull a DENVER on the Nuggets...

One thing ill say - I will give credit to coaching staff and to LeBron...they are making it clear that reaves/luka are the go to guys, and LeBron is playing free safety essentially on both ends, and it's working. LeBron being 3rd option and playing more off ball is the recipe for success for this team.

This was such a massive win too because now we own tiebreakers over both minnesota and denver, and this week, if we win both in houston, we will own tiebreaker over them too.

Even with thsi win against denver, I still would not wanna play them in the postseason. This team makes the most ridiculous shots against us and they scare the s*** out of me. Although it would be great to get revenge on the nuggets for all those years they beat our a** by beating them in the 1st round and sending them home early...I just want to be able to breathe in the 1st round and i'd feel better playing wolves or rockets

 

finally got to see the whole thing.

murray was off, but yes, some of that was that we didn't give him many good looks. when he hit his first one against the clock with a hand in his face after we'd played good defense, i was like...here we go again. then he never made another one. we also attacked him relentlessly on the other end. we hunted him like teams hunt luka and AR, just over and over found whoever he was guarding. i think that tired his legs a bit, and he was short on everything.

luka had an uncharacteristically bad shooting night. he had two airballs on decent looks (one pretty open, actually) from three, and a couple nothing but glass midrange/paint shots. but he hit that one big three, the three fts, and the game winner, so... pretty good defense from him, too, imo. whole team just looks a lot better there. we're still getting murdered in transition, though.

ayton played well in the OT, which i didn't have on my bingo card. though the one play where he blocked jokic in iso coverage and then failed to grab the ball was classic ayton.

what a game from smart. gordon did his typical klay thompson impression against us, but we had smart this time as a role player just stepping up and making plays on both ends at crucial times.

i thought we played pretty well despite not shooting very well, and that was a tough win against a good team. they were missing watson, so that's probably an issue. i'd probably pick them in a series against us, but at least we don't have that total mental block anymore.

 

We were missing Kleber so it evens out.

 

I'm just glad we had a one-game reprieve from Jamal Murray absolutely torturing us. That we won was the cherry on top.

 

Rockets are like the Twolves they really need a PG.

Frustrating game as the Lakers missed a bunch of easy shots in the 4th

Ayton with another jack in the box game only popping up like a surprise Me Clutch

This bench is kind of sucking now? As Smart is uptrending and Ayton at least showing up to finish games suddenly getting basically nothing from b bench now

 

I think it’s really underrated how good we’ve been in the clutch. What’s that 19-6 or 20-6 that we’ve won when we’re within 5 points to finish a game?

We kinda punked Houston defensively in the second half. Got to give it up to the coaching staff, they found a weakness and exploited it. Holding them to 35 in a half is devastating.

Tonight, we were defensively good, offensively Reaves, Ayton and the bench all kind of struggled. It spells pretty good for us that when we don’t have our A game we can still throw enough to win.

 

Old fashioned mid 90s basketball

 

44-32 rebounds
what are they doing at practice ?
but still won in clutch thanks to Ayton and some steals from AR

 

Houston is the best rebounding team in the NBA. Their offensive rebounding led to the best performing offense until Adams went down. They’ve literally built their team with plus rebounders across the board. I mean check this roster rebounding wise per 36:

Thompson (7.4)
Eason (8.7)
Jabari (7.0)
Durant (5.4)
Sengun (9.6)

Then they have Adams (13.6), Capela (13.3), Okogie (5.2), DFS (5.5) off the bench. Only Sheppard is a weak defender on their team.

So we aren’t going to win that battle.

 

but it's not only in today's game
Lakers literally can't get rebounds

 

Lakers leave LA, beat HOU 100-92 in a game that, once again, felt like the playoffs. We're in 3rd now currently, 1.5 up over HOU, who we play again on Wed.

Rebounds:
Hou 44
Lakers 32

Lakers only managed a measly 17 points in the 4th Q. AR was 0-8 from long. You look at that jit and say, Wait...you're saying they WON the game? How?

You know the answer: Defense.

Went into halftime down 57-51, outscored HOU in the 2nd half 49-35. HOU, with basically the same record as us, playing at home in front of a raucous crowd, managed only 35 points in the 2nd half. Only 12 (twelve) in the 4th Q. Why? Because now the Lakers are "coalescing," according to JJ.

What I see is a team that, earlier in the season, wasn't much interested in playing defense...playing intense defense. At times over this 6-game winning streak I've felt like the Lakers were a "ringer": they play like an okay team, but when you punch them in the mouth and go on a 13-2 run in the 3rd, they shrivel up like a stack of dimes and concede the game. Not these guys, whoever they are. The 4th quarter indeed felt like a 1992 game, and the Lakers did not let up, despite missing shot after shot. At one point HOU missed a shot, then got 3 straight offensive boards...and every shot was contested. They didn't score.

Lakers up 83-80 to start the 4th. AR hits Lebron for a dunk at 11:17, 43 secs into the 4th. Lakers up 85-80. They don't score another point again until Lebron hits a FT at the 5:52 mark...and won the game. Why? They played intense D. Lakers won the 4th 17-12. Mostly with intense defense. The kinda defense that gives me wood.

It seems like we got into HOU's heads (maybe not Sheppard). KD was doubled, threw it away, stepped back on the 8 sec line, didn't get it over the 8 sec line, blatantly shoved AR when he didn't need to: flagrant: AR hits both FTs, Lakers score with the ball out of bounds. KD, who will be first ballot unanimous HoF, at times acts like a stooopid azz and hurts his own team. It helps when you have a guy like Marcus Smart on him, too.

Huge win. Can't believe the turn-around mentally with this team since the Knicks game. DEEEEEfense! Hustle, moving the ball. Good spacing, talking on defense.

Wed's game against HOU might get ugly. I hope our guys stay cool.