At my age, an hour and a half, for general admission standing shows, is just about right. We just saw Jack White up in Chicago the other night and my face was blown off by his energetic excellence, yet again. There’s physically no way he could do three hours unless there was an hour, slowed down acoustic set in the middle of the show.
He's probably the most important player for the Lakers this series. If he can play the 5 and knock down those threes, Minny will have no answer for the Lakers.
I’d say he is the most important player for our title aspirations bar none. We’re a different team with a 15/7 stat line from Rui. It means that two of Lebron, Luka, Austin or our bench can have a subpar game and we are still in it. His defence on bigs and outside shooting also makes our best 5 man lineup Luka/Reaves/DFS/Lebron/Rui work. If he can have a good playoffs, we will win a few rounds. However, if Gabe, DFS and Rui all shoot over 40% from 3 on 15-16 attempts, I think we win the ring. That would mean that we’d have too much offence to go with a good amount of defence.
Rui is important - we shall see how much so. I’ll put it this way - it’s a great luxury to have him and what he can bring to the table. He needs to be more consistent than last year to get the minutes. The good news is we also have DFS and a healthy Vando now as well. To me the most important player is Luka. He raises the bar for us. I loved AD but he really struggled to take over and fell short a couple/few years in a row. I expect Luka to give us a chance for the championship based on what he did last season getting to the Finals and with what I think is a better team now around him in the Lakers.
The thing I love about basketball is this dichotomy; its truly a team game where a weak link on either end can torpedo your chances, yet a single talented individual can have an overwhelming influence on the outcome. It's pretty clear that Luka, Lebron and AR are the best and most important players on the team, they're going to probably go off for about 80 points a night. It's also clear that Gabe and DFS are going to be good defensively and will hit some shots. It's also clear that Vando is a pest for 20 mins a game. But it's Rui who tips the balance. If you get Rui fronting and disrupting their 5 on defence, while he scores 15 points a game - it's going to be hard to beat us. He is critical to how we want to play and I've come around to the idea that he was a big part of our best winning run this season with his defence and offence.
Ahhhhh, I love it that so many have come around to how valuable Rui is. The dude has turned himself into a very good three point shooter, and causes problems for teams who think they can take advantage of our “smaller” team in the post. Yeah, he still gets lost on defense sometimes, but when he’s on, and two of Austin/Luka/LeBron are as well, we are an extremely difficult team to beat.
Big series for Rui on both sides of the floor. Offensively, I think he and DFS are going to get a ton of open corner threes. If they make them at a pretty good clip, we win IMO. Defensively, I think Rui is going to get the Randle assignment. At least for most of the game, LeBron might take Randle down the stretch of games. In some ways that's good for him, he won't be chasing him around screens or anything like he had to do last playoffs with Porter. But Randle has played well against Rui historically and Rui doesn't always utilize his physical gifts as best he can. If Rui can stand up to Randle physically and force him into jumpers, we'll be in a good spot.
I thought Rui was really good tonight. 5 rebounds, 2 steals and a block - but it doesn't tell the whole story, he battled hard defensively. He was also handy offensively, we need to get him more 3's though, at least a handful.
Great defense in the 3rd and a big time stop at the rim in crunch time in the 4th. I was worried about his status after the Wolves tried to take his face off. Then it took forever for an update on him after he went to the locker room.
Honestly, he was very good on D in game 2. Kind of makes you wonder where is this effort every night. He still isn't the best rebounder though.
He’s a decent player, but yeah, I don’t know that he’s a championship player, and that’s what we’re going for here. It seems year after year he lets us down in crucial playoff moments
