I will accept fewer fast break points if our half court offense is fluid and defense is sound. That combination will lead to a confetti covered floor come next June.

Another key to our pace will be how much Farmar plays in comparison to Brown and what the coaches instruct Farmar to do on offense when he’s in the game. Remember, last season, the coaches essentially gave Farmar free reign to push the pace. This was especially true at the beginning of the season when Trevor and Lamar (two very good uptempo players) were paired with him on the “bench mob”. But when Drew got hurt and LO/Ariza went to the starting lineup, Farmar got out of sorts some and openly complained about his confusion with his “role” – saying he didn’t know what he was supposed to do anymore. My point being, if Brown sees more minutes than Farmar next season or if the coaches instruct Farmar to play a more controlled game, we may look to push pace less by design. I mean, when you look at our roster now: Fisher, Kobe, WOW, Gasol, Bynum, Artest, LO, Walton, Sasha, Farmar, Powell…most, if not all, of these guys are better in the half court than in transition. Don’t get me wrong, every team should look to get out and run in order to get easy baskets. But playing a fast break offense is a different style completely. The only team that I can recall that balanced a great fast break with excellent half court offense were our very own Showtime Lakers, and they had the best PG ever running the show. It’s not an easy line to walk (or run in this case).

Anyways, in the end, I’m not sure if we’ll run more or less. But based off our personnel, I wouldn’t doubt that we’d look to play a more controlled game and focus on scoring in the half court. But, of course, I still think we’ll try to control the glass with one of our 3 very good rebounders and then have our other big that’s in the game run post-lane sprints in order to establish the deep post (ala Bynum in his 42pt game). Realize too, that one of our best plays is the P&R in early offense with Bynum/Gasol setting a drag screen for Kobe at the top of the key. So, maybe we’ll see more early offense and less outright fast breaking.

BTW, and it probably goes without saying, I think it’s great to have Odom back in the fold.

I’m not claiming we can ride him. In fact I’d rather ride Gasol like we did last season. But I like his mobility when he’s healthy. He fits in a lot better. And you don’t have to see much to know that his mobility was not nearly the same with the brace on.

And I don’t think anybody thinks we’re going to be a D’Antoni-like running team. I just don’t believe we’ll be a “slower” team next year due to losing Ariza. We just might not steal as many lazy passes.

Part of playing good defense is getting easy scores off stops. Lots of teams observe that their offenses get off-track whenever their opponent repeatedly scores on them, allowing the defense to get set up. Getting stops more often allows semi-transition opportunities, as opposed to gambles/steals which often lead to high-flying dunks. The loss of Ariza’s athleticism will probably lead to fewer turnovers, but more missed shots. In this way, we can expect many more semi-transition opportunities than full-blown turnovers.

And while Bynum’s 42 point game was great to watch, we have to remember that he was playing against DeAndre Jordan and Brian Skinner, two guys not known for playing much defense. Jordan gave up Opposing PER’s of 23.5 for C’s last season, with a PER differential of -7.5. Skinner gave up Opposing PER’s of 18.7 for C’s, PER differential of -10.0. Couple the fact that Jordan is a (statistically) much worse defender, played Center most of the game, and played many more minutes than Skinner, and Bynum’s performance becomes a little less brilliant. While we should celebrate his game (most people don’t get 40 point games against anyone), we should be careful how much we extrapolate from one game. Let’s see if he actually has some more lateral movement and explosiveness before we go claiming we can ride him for the entire season.

Seems like the 91 & 00 Lakers are the winners of inflicting heartache…best post in that thread:

“two weeks after that game (in 2000) at the Roseland. I had finally gotten over the loss & was enjoying the show when and the duo comes out for an encore…they were wearing “Tenacious D” shirts, asked if anyone wanted them, took them off to give to the crowd and what did they have on underneath? LAKER F’N JERSEYS! The crowd went nuts, we all cursed them, and now all I can do is laugh at how brilliant that was.”

Unrelated note: The more I look at other NBA team blogs, the more I love this one…not just for content, but also for format/appearance. FB&G is top notch.

“What you’re gonna see is the ultimate competitor: someone that doesn’t care who’s in front of him or what’s in front of him, he’s going to try to get around it, or move it, or go through it, or break it, or something (laughs).”

http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=13496

If Rambis gets the Minny job we are stuck with listening to Mark Jackson another year …. C’mon Minny, you’re better than that!

Saying a team will run more, be faster, and play better defense is not contradictory.

And take this excerpt from Travis’ (166) post “Watching Bynum’s 42pt. game, it’s pretty clear that once he gets in shape, we will be a tough team stay ahead of on turnovers and rebounds. At least half of his 42 were directly attributable to the fact that he was beating Brian Skinner up and down the floor consistently, sometimes by a large measure. Now when you add Gasol and LO, we have 3 big men who are going to make life difficult for guys like Shaq over 48 minutes. And I agree with the comment earlier about Artest. The guy can get steals, AND run a break, and finish a break. Ariza could only do 2 of those things.”