a) A nice bright spot for the Lakers yesterday. However, they did let Bowen get open, but stopped the dribble-drive. Excellent defense end of 2nd and start of the 3rd. B+

2) The Lakers cannot settle for 3 pointers against this team. Drive the lane and get them in foul trouble. If they switch up to a zone, put the shooters in.

a) The Lakers settled for 3s early and only the bench connected consistently. LO, stop shooting 3s. The Lakers got Bowen and Ginobli in foul trouble early.
B-.

3) Limit turnovers. Fisher and Farmar need to handle the ball. Keep it out of Kobe’s and Lamar’s hands. Bowen is a good defender and Ginobli + Parker + Horry will step in for a flop. If the Lakers limit dribbling and move the ball around efficiently, they will find seams and not allow players to setup for the charge.

a) Excellent ball control and movement. Only a couple of silly passes. Very few fast break points for the Spurs and only a couple of offensive fouls by the Lakers.
A-

(And people get double foolish points for talking about JO as if he was the JO of two years ago and thinking he’s the answer. Have you seen him this season?)

When you say kwame/Odom for J.O., I hope you don’t mean both of them. (BTW there is no issue in Bird “going” for that. He’d jump at it the way J.O is playing). I’d trade Brown and filler, but given how J.O. looks this season, he’s not worthy of any deal involving Odom.. He’s down a block and 3 defensive boards from the last two seasons and his mobility has become a real issue. Part of it is the running system he’s in, but the Lakers are a faster offense this season too. And I’m not even sure the 2007 J.O. is that much better than Kwame on defense.

On a more positive note, Trevor Ariza could be a real impact player for us. He really knows how to stay with his guy and rotate on the perimiter, and I think it may be rubbing off on some of the other players. I love to see a young guy finding his niche on a team. There are key junctions in a game when he is the only small forward I want to see on the floor.

The music selection at Staples Center is terrible. Safe, innocuous and totally crap.

The half court short in between the 3rd and 4th quarters by the fan looking to win some cash was awful. It looked like a hooked golf shot. It was way left. I felt bad for the guy. He got a substantial boo.

@64. Lamar got into an argument in the fourth quarter, when the game was pretty much sewn up. Kobe kept pushing him back towards half court so that he wouldn’t get a technical. I’m not sure why he was so angered.

Re: Bynum’s ejection. That was really confusing from the nosebleed seats. He and Oberto were tangled up but not looking at each other right at halfcourt. Also, Bynum had already knocked ginobili to the floor earlier in the game. And then all of a sudden there was a technical. Which I could understand. Although I echo the sentiments of wondering why it wasn’t a double T. Maybe Bynum started it. And then I have no idea why Bynum was so upset or what he said. Because it was actually a different official not near Andrew who gave the second one. He was standing right next to ginobili and I thought maybe Ginobili got a T for something. Bynum didn’t even seem like he was doing much to earn the second one. But after he got the second T is when he really exploded. Multiple Lakers held him back. I forgot to look at Phil’s reaction but it didn’t seem to phase him. This was the first point the crowd kind of got into it. A lot of boos when Finley was shooting the free throws, although, he made the second one and quieted the crowd down again.

In person, it seemed like the reffing was fairly consistent in letting physical contact near the basket go. Lots of times players would go to the basket and seem to get their arms hit and no whistle would sound. Ginobili and Luke were the most frequent victims of this pattern.

I don’t know if they showed it on TV, but I was a little bit amazed that Craig Sager got an interview with Phil Jackson during a time out or between a quarter. You’d think he was busy drawing up plays or thinking about adjustments.

Who was this Darius Washington character? He was no Tony Parker but quite passable as an NBA player.

Lakers did a good job clamping down on Ginobili but were fortunate to have the Spurs miss A LOT of open looks. They had to scramble a lot on defense. A healthy Spurs team would have killed the Lakers with all those open shots.

Sasha and Kobe kept leaving Bruce Bowen open for threes. I think that hurt them a lot, especially when they were just sagging off, not actually giving rotation help.

I agree with the sentiments that Kobe took a lot of ill-advised shots. In person you can tell how difficult/low-percentage a lot of his fadeaways are. Many of them came up short. I also agree that the Lakers were shooting jump shots without looking inside first. Our players aren’t jump-shooters. Much more successful around the basket.

Lamar’s game didn’t seem as bad in person as many previous comments have complained about. He was getting a lot of rebounds, playing active defense. Basically having a pretty typical Lamar game. The only knocks I had were the missed dunk early in the game and the ugly three balls.

“Not much to say. He lost his cool for a second, he got tossed,” Bryant said. “Andrew should be proud – first ejection, national TV, he went out in a blaze of glory.”

http://www.nba.com/games/20071214/LALGSW/preview.html?nav=scoreboardhome