LAKERS -at- SPURS - 1/1 - Thoughts and :-)) Ratings

 
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DancingBarry
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:49 pm    Post subject: LAKERS -at- SPURS - 1/1 - Thoughts and :-)) Ratings

Starting Off the New Year with a W... Teams will have to get used to the back-to-back road games against the same opponents, and that may come with various challenges.

For the Lakers, they know opponents will want to measure themselves against the champs. They’ll get good efforts on both nights. Coaches will be making adjustments like a playoff situation between games. And, whoever loses the first one, will be bringing it in the second game.

The Spurs weren’t going to get rolled like the last game, and both teams battled even through the first half. The Spurs had a 3-point lead with 2:34 left after a Rudy Gay three-point play.

Defensively, the Lakers haven’t really flexed that muscle on an opponent with any consistency. They didn’t tonight until these last two minutes of the game. Dennis Schröder came up big with two strong defensive stands to get stops. Kyle Kuzma tipped in a LeBron miss with a minute left to give the Lakers the lead. After another LeBron score, the Lakers finally had it in the bag.

With the 109-103 win, they took the first game of 2021 and completed the back-to-back road wins in San Antonio.


LeBron -- -- The triple-double alert. He was the trigger man on more set plays tonight and the assists followed. We also saw LeBron take over the Rondo-like lob to AD when he’s spinning in the post. Last time we tried that was with Schröder making the pass, he nearly injured AD. Late in the game, LeBron was the trigger on the AD/Schroder screen action. He sank a few three balls tonight. He seems to opt for that in the regular season more when he has a mismatch with a big. In the post season, he was much more aggressive in attacking off the dribble on those. A lot of bully ball around the rim. He muscled in a big layup with 28 seconds left after overpowering one defender, then powering through a bump from another. The Lakers were a -12 when LeBron was off the court tonight. We play really disjointed offensively without him and our D just isn’t there with any consistency. This is the 10th game they’ve played as a group. They’ve made good progress, but I still think LeBron doesn’t quite have his legs. He missed a dunk tonight and didn’t try to hammer on another one he could have. Seems he’s still playing a bit closer to the ground then he was at the end of last season. That backwards flip out of the summersault off that missed dunk was impressive, though. The Stats: He scored 26 points on 8-22 shooting (3-7 from three, 7-7 from the line) to go with 11 boards, 10 assists, 2 steals, 4 turnovers and no fouls in 36 minutes. He was a +18.

Davis -- -- Glimpses of how this team might look. I’ll save most of the Schröder stuff for his section below, but that chemistry there is building. Differently than you might think or have predicted. Outside of the AD/Schroder chemistry, we saw some other moments like AD and Harrell crashing the offensive glass on one play for a couple offensive boards with AD getting the tip in. I’d really like to see more of that combined pressure/force utilized like that. This game, though, had the feel of the Lakers just being bigger really for the first time this season. In any event, having two bigs causing problems at the rim helped AD to 7 offensive boards. As mentioned above, another area of improvement was LeBron finding him early with a couple of lobs. One was on one of those Rondo-like post spin sequences when the ball is brought up and AD spins for the lob. This is the AD I know. Now, onto the new/improved AD...he sank 4-6 from three tonight and had Pop shaking his head. When he has it going, it looks like he’s shooting freethrows, it’s just that pure. Developing this is really going to help our guys who attack the rim as AD will pull them from the paint. You just can’t give him room. On one of those threes, he pulled down a defensive board, pushed it up court, went between the legs, then behind the back and swished the three. What are you going to do with that? Defensively, pretty forgettable game. He seems like he’s about a foot off guys and they are just comfortably getting into their shot (Johnson with 26 tonight, I think a career high). Not quite at the DPOY level yet. The Stats: He scored 34 points on 13-26 shooting (4-6 from three, 4-7 from the line) to go with 11 boards (7 offensive), 5 assists, 2 steals, 1 turnover and 2 fouls in 35 minutes. He was a +0.

Schröder -- -- That defense down the stretch, man. He got stops on both Mills and DeRozan. Not just stops, but they didn’t hit the rim (blocking Mills it looked like). In a game where we were struggling to hold the Spurs on that end of the floor, those were the two biggest defensive plays of the night. Great job stepping up to the challenge and coming through. We also saw him sink a three off a Kuzma kickout in crunch time and also hit a three off screen sequence with AD. Later, he screened for AD on that same sequence and LeBron found AD for the three. We’re going to see more and more of that with LeBron or Gasol as the trigger man on the passing from the top of the arc. But note it was AD/Schroder. As a defender, you really want your big guy to stay with AD and your small to stay with the speedy Schröder if you can. They will just abuse mismatches if we get them, so keep an eye on that as the season goes along. But let’s also go back a little earlier in the game. Late in the second quarter, we saw some AD/Schröder chemistry developing on a two-man sequence. The ball went into AD at the high post on the wing off the feed from Schroder, AD then pitched it back to Schröder for the wing three. Next time down the Spurs were concerned about the three, Schröder used that to his advantage and stepped on the gas to cruise in for an uncontested layup. Next time down, AD faced up on the play and hit the wing jumper. Three plays, 7 points there. With AD as a threat to shoot from deep, his big will also be pulled way out of the paint, which is trouble for the D with Schröder’s speed. What’s also interesting about all of that is we’re not trusting Schröder to be the playmaker on any of those, rather the finisher. Not that he can’t make some passes (he hit AD for a three and also a dunk off a drive and dish early on). But I think in crunch time, we will work more on plays where someone else is QBing the offense (last season he had CP3, now he’s got LBJ). Outside of those moments above, Schröder struggled a bit with his midrange in this one, which kept the scoring lower. Still, I love how the Lakers are showing some glimpses of using Schröder effectively in 5-out offense situations. The Stats: He scored 15 points on 6-15 shooting (3-5 from three) to go with 4 boards, 3 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, 3 turnovers and 2 fouls in 33 minutes. He was a +3.

Caldwell-Pope -- -- He was putting together a great second half, before twisting an ankle as he tried to take off on a finish at the rim. It was one of those plays where you could see there was no lift on what looked like a sure finish. It’s too bad because he was killing it to start the second half. He had contributed to 8 of the Lakers 10 that quarter and I believe assisted on the other hoop (hitting AD rolling off the strong handoff sequence). Great energy to open the half. “Hopefully, I can go in the next couple days,” KCP said. He thinks he will be fine, but we will see if he plays in the next one. If we had AC available, it wouldn’t be as big a deal, but we’re a little shorthanded. The Stats: He scored 11 points on 4-8 shooting (1-2 from three, 2-2 from the line) to go with 2 offensive boards, 1 assist and 1 foul in 17 minutes. He was a +4.

Gasol -- -- One of those games where 0 points tells you really very little about impact. Offensively, he was using his height advantage early to tap out some offensive boards to Schröder for jumpers. You’ve got to take advantage when they put a small like DeRozan on him. We did a poor job of that last game, but saw Gasol play bigger causing problems there. The Lakers dominated on the offensive glass (16-8). That’s more like the Lakers of last year. Again, more passing sequences from Gasol. On one we ball reversed from LeBron/AD strong side to Gasol to trigger the weakside movement. As soon as he touched the ball the guards went into action. Schröder cut and got in the way of KCP’s defenders. KCP stepped to the ball, then backcut and Marc hit him for the dunk. Pretty work. Love having our stars strongside as the decoy. Defensively, some excellent blitzes and the team scrambled well behind him. On one, Marc deflected the pass, on the other, the D just rotated their butts off behind some good Spurs passing and got the stop. That was a brief glimpse of the playing on a string that we eventually had going last year. Some excellent rotations and he finished the night with 2 blocks in 20 minutes. Both his fouls were cheap. The Stats: He didn’t score on 0-1 shooting from three to go with 8 boards (2 offensive), 3 assists, 2 blocks and 2 fouls in 20 minutes. He was a +0.

Matthews -- -- He missed his first three and I guess that limited his time in the first half for THT. Once KCP went down, we had to really rely on him to step up. He didn’t score and only shot two threes. He did have a great drive and dish off an ATO sequence that set up Trezz for a dunk. There were definitely some small chemistry issues on both ends. Just little things that he might learn as time goes on. One was in early offense when Schröder had no secondary defenders behind his primary man. He usually likes to use his speed to get to the rim in early offense on those sequences. Instead, we saw Wes flash over to the post and ask for the ball. Schröder swung it the other way and we erased a good opportunity. Another small thing was just switching/communicating on D. Guys are making a switch and Wes is trying to stick with his man. Certainly some of this could be understanding Wes’s abilities. But if he’s not guarding a power wing player, then those KCP/Wes switches should just be automatic. Instead, we saw him trying to recover, leaving KCP’s man open and KCP had Wes’s guy contained fine. That was just one instance of that and there were a few. We want to play on a string and it’s just going to take reps, film work and communication to get there. The Stats: He didn’t score on 0-2 shooting from three to go with 2 boards, 3 assists, 1 block and 3 fouls in 25 minutes. He was a -1.

Harrell -- -- Some really weak D to start the fourth quarter. He ends up guarding no one in drop coverage as the Spurs rise up for the midrange looks. It happened several times. Then we finally called a timeout after they went past him for a layup in transition. Vogel pulled him. The D will get better as others step it up on that end and Trezz gets more familiar, but he’s definitely lost the trust from the coaches at this point to close games. Which is fine. We didn’t close with our other bigs last year, either, when it mattered. But we do need better. Offensively, he’d score on a rim run when LeBron found him and then had another dunk on a drive and dish from Wes. The play with Wes was a set play that ended up with Wes attacking off the three line. Other than that, nothing really set up for Trezz. We rarely gave him the ball to iso and we didn’t have any two-man action for him. I suspect we start integrating a little more for him shortly. They want double-doubles from him and that may take working out a few pet plays rather than just having him in complete garbage man role. The Stats: He scored 4 points on 2-6 shooting to go with 11 boards (2 offensive), 1 assist, 1 steal, 2 turnovers and 1 foul in 23 minutes. He was a +0.

Kuzma -- -- Big time tip in with a minute left that ended up being the game-winner. He crashed the glass on the LeBron miss and got the go-ahead bucket. That was his only hoop in the second half. He did have a key drive and kick to Schröder for a wide open three. I was about to be ticked for Kuz not making that pass because it seemed a little delayed, but he made an excellent kickout. Winning ball. Really up and down game from him. He picked up some ticky tack fouls in the first half, cheap calls really, and had to sit with the foul trouble despite some decent shooting in the half. He had 9 points on 4-7 shooting in the first half, hitting a three flashing to the ball and on the move to go along with some midrange jumpers. Defensively, the team as a whole was soft. But it did drive me especially crazy when DeRozan would just back Kuz up on the dribble until he got to the freethrow line and pull-up for an easy shot. You can’t just let someone get into their comfort zone easily like that and Spurs shooters were looking too comfortable all night long. The Stats: He scored 11 points on 5-11 shooting (1-4 from three) to go with 4 boards, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 block, 3 turnovers and 5 fouls in 23 minutes. He was a -2.

Horton-Tucker -- -- I want to start with the D tonight. Two blocks and a steal in 14 minutes. He just turned 20 and was doing that against some savvy players. His length just surprises guys, I think. They thought they were open and suddenly THT’s Inspector Gadget arms are extending out and disrupting things. Good to see him make an impact on that end of the floor after having a weak outing previously. Offensively, he sank a three on a kickout and spun through defenders to get free and score a layup around a third. Good minutes. We needed that with KCP going out and AC not available. The Stats: He scored 5 points on 2-6 shooting (1-2 from three) to go with 1 board, 1 steal, 2 blocks and 1 foul in 14 minutes. He was a +2.

Morris -- -- He hit one three on a kick out. The shot looked a bit off on release tonight. Down the stretch, Vogel went with Kuzma to close in our small ball unit instead of Morris. Kuz was a bit more mobile and the Spurs play really small. The Stats: He scored 3 points on 1-4 shooting from three to go with 4 boards and 3 fouls in 13 minutes. He was a +6.

Vogel -- -- Key Moment: The Lakers trailed by 3 with 2:34 left after giving up an And-1 to Rudy Gay. That was the last score of the game for the Spurs. We had AD, LeBron, Kuzma, Matthews and Schröder out there with Schröder coming up with a couple big stops.

Key Substitution: Taking Trezz out with 4:34 left and the score tied 97-97. The Lakers would outscore the Spurs 12-6 from there. It’s clear Trezz is struggling with the defensive schemes right now and since that Portland game Vogel has the hook out to bring in others to close. We don’t want deep drop coverage giving up open, easy midrange shots down the stretch. To be fair, we typically didn’t keep Howard or McGee out there, either to close games.

Key Stats: I can’t help but highlight the 42.4% three shooting again (14-33). Lakers are No. 2 in the league in three shooting right now. And they were scorching in the preseason, as well.


Last edited by DancingBarry on Sat Jan 02, 2021 9:25 am; edited 2 times in total
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mhan00
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:50 pm    Post subject:

Ugly, but a win. Happy new year!
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akgolf
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:50 pm    Post subject:

Thanks DB!
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deal
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:23 pm    Post subject:

Yep, thanks DB.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 11:32 pm    Post subject:

Nice one DB.

Gritty win, and will take it.


One observation made in the game forum was the fact AD and LBJ did burn some minutes tonight - makes me wonder will we see more consistency from the depth we have so LBJ can reduce the minute load?

THT when he first came in agitated me with that 1 on 3 drive he made as soon as he got the ball and then chucked the ball backwards over his head at the bucket (missed). After that, however, he seemed to just go with the offense and stepped up on D. Had a solid game.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 12:34 am    Post subject:

Thanks, DB!
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 12:47 am    Post subject:

Not the most enjoyable game but YAY WINNING!

Thanks DB
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TooMuchMajicBuss
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:08 am    Post subject:

Thanks DB!
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:41 am    Post subject:

DrDent wrote:
One observation made in the game forum was the fact AD and LBJ did burn some minutes tonight - makes me wonder will we see more consistency from the depth we have so LBJ can reduce the minute load?
Vogel is trying to find the right balance of having LBJ and AD having the right amount of PT, with a long-range game plan focus.

With KCP and AC probably out for the next game, TNT will probably get more PT?

Great that the team is incorporating Gasol as an offensive weapon, something that Dwight and JaVale weren't able to do

Seems as if the wild card is who is playing best among Harrel, Kuz, Morris and Matthews when closing games with LBJ, AD, Schoeder and AC
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PenG_
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:01 am    Post subject:

Lebron still finding his legs. Only shooting 66% at the rim.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:36 am    Post subject:

Who says DS does not play D. WOW. Thanks DB and Happy New Year.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 7:42 am    Post subject:

Thanks for the recap DB. Was watching my Buckeyes kicking Clemsons butt and missed the Lakers game.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:14 am    Post subject:

Strange game but I'll take the W.

Thanks, DB!
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:36 pm    Post subject:

Schroder's defense on those critical possessions was a joy to watch. We already know he can shoot and has speed to burn, but to able to defend on that level in those crucial moments bodes well for the future.

Gasol, even when he doesn't score much, is extremely valuable.

The term "playing on a string" was the most enjoyable description of the summary, DB. We played that way last year, and I've been anxiously wanting to say that about our defense this year.

We already that know we have a great offense with the added weapons of Schroder & Trez, but playing on a string on defense brings us back to what won that 2020 banner.

Great to see that level of D. Thanks DB!
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:23 pm    Post subject:

Schroder's D has been a pleasant revelation. You could see the Spurs hunting him with their best scorers and Schroder denied them both at critical times.

Doesn't Kuz seem a bit hyper? From his shot to the bullet passes he makes - everything at a heightened pace when it doesn't necessarily need to be. THT, on the other hand, has a more measured approach. Tale of two youngsters.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 2:59 pm    Post subject:

Thanks DB!
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