Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

hate to see it

 

I hope we win but OKC is a bottomless pit in terms of depth

 

don't they have like 50 more picks in the pipeline haha

 

Nikola Topic (testicular surgery)

 

yeah, do we need to know that much about a player? Geez.

 

Knecht needs more playing time

 

I remember when we were up 10-6. Then it all went downhill fast. OKC went up by 37 at one point. Their D was incredible. And OKC was on a BTB.

Hate to say it, but as good as OKC's offense is, their defense is even better. Damn. DAY-um.

Lakers shot 40% for the game. OKC: 50%. OKC only had 4 blocks though. Maybe 14 steals meant you didn't need to block shots.

Kinda horrifying, TBH.

 

70-38 at halftime

That's needs no explanation

DK 16 pts 4-5 from the 3 line

Smart, Luka, AR and Jake 3-20 from the 3 line

 

Yep. Time to pump the brakes on championship aspirations. As a Laker fan, Im smart enough to realize the Lakers aren’t there yet.

 

i mean, i've been saying all year that denver and okc were a tier above us, so this isn't super shocking. we had a bad game. they also murdered the warriors last night in much the same fashion. they're on a hot streak.

i'm actually not super concerned. the hawks loss was a trap game loss many of us saw coming. this was going to be a loss. time to see how we respond, as we really haven't played great ball for the past few. we have several winnable games ahead, starting with a dangerous road game against a wounded animal pelicans team that desperately needs a win and certainly wants it against us.

 

Just a good old fashioned butt whooping.

Overall in our losses I've seen quite a bit that I think just having LeBron back fixes so I'm not concerned overall.

Sucks to watch us get killed like that though.

 

with lebron, we could actually be 11-1 right now, imo. last night being the 1.

 

looking forward to seeing how the team reacts to that butt whooping

 

Like I’ve said before, it’s going to take longer than just this season to build a fully optimized team around Luka.

 

Time to show the character and have a solid rebound game

 

this will anger some, but you also have to expect okc to take a step down when their payroll explodes next year and they have to start making choices they've been able to avoid up until now. and the nuggets remain a team that has all its money in its top 5 players. which is great, but they struggle when anyone is missing.

anyway, my theory is always to just be in contention, as you don't know who's going to be healthy in the playoffs. if it's you, and you're a top-5 team, you have a shot. i think we can build a top five team in the next couple years (we're not that far off now).

yeah, and in a way we're trying the two timelines thing with lebron. it's already bitten us early, and it will bite us again when he retires. it's hard to operate with two philosophies.

 

Yeah I think Caruso, Hartenstein, and maybe Dort will be on their way out of OKC as early as next summer. They have guys like Wallace, Wiggins, now this Mitchell kid ready to step up as the primary role players around Shai/Williams/Chet. That's what the mountain of picks are for - not to somehow add Giannis or another star on a huge contract, but to keep cycling out role players.

 

yeah, it's possible they've got the formula and have a role player pipeline that will allow a dynasty, but i have to see it first. again, they almost lost to indy and denver last year with all their horses.

 

OKC is close to breaking the team up. Next year their payroll is $275m, the cap is $166m. So they’ll have to get that down to about $200-210m.

They have team options on Hartenstein and Dortz - and I imagine they can’t pick those up. That’s about $47m. Then they have to trade either Caruso or Isaiah Joe into cap space for picks. Or maybe they move one of Jalen Williams or Chet. Jalen Williams is probably the least needed. But once again they need cap relief so can’t get anything significant back.

It’s SGA’s supermax the year after that will force them to trade one of Chet or Williams and look at potentially letting go of iHart and Dortz in my opinion.

I’m actually ringing them up and saying we’d be happy to trade for Caruso for the expirings of Gabe and Kleber. Throw in our first and all our swaps if they throw in Ajay Mitchell. It seems like a pipe dream, but they are in serious trouble tax wise.