I have to side with Phil. The Lakers pay Gasol’s salary, not the Spanish government. I respect his right to represent his country in international competition. But if he can get out there and contribute he needs to do so.

Pau needs to take a lesson from Kobe. You would have to cut both of his feet off to keep him off the floor. I am sure Pau needed a rest. Phil could have given it to him. But Pau also could have opted out of international play this summer. What does he plan to do next Summer for the World Championships? Will he play and then expect the Lakers to give him two months off again while still collecting his $16 million dollar salary? I hope not.

As fans, we have vested interest in our team, and have the right to worry and voice our worries whether it’s the offseason, preseason, regular season or the postseason. It’s never too early and never too late to start complaining, as this season isn’t the first nor will it be the last.

But at the same time, we, as fans, have no control over anything. Nada. This makes it quite futile to complain or criticize anything, since none of our complaints will make it to the coaching staff or the players, unless it is stuff they can use to their advantage, a la PJ using the media.

So, any criticism and complaint is basically moot, especially if there are other fans, and in this case, the blog author, who is irritated by criticisms that aren’t informative.

Yes, not constructive, but informative. This blog is not for the players and coaches to read and search for answers; it is a place where us fans can turn to find insight and deepen our knowledge and increase our appreciation of the game.

So if you newcomers haven’t realized, comments are valued and discussed if they contain concrete examples of plays, even if those comments criticize Kobe or Fisher. But if the comments have no basketball insight, then even the most obvious (Ammo sucks) will be either ignored or will be seen as mere whining and taking up bandwidth.

But a lot of the issues so far is due to old-fashioned sloppiness, not to new teammates learning the system. Bynum has never been good at positioning himself for rebounds; that is something that he needs to learn if he is going to maximize his potential.

Since when is homerism taking a patient approach when discussing games with other fans of the same team? “the little Things” is a vague term. In relation to boxing out, I’d say that A) we’re missing a 7 footer and B) the other seven footer is learning to deal with some obvious fear over his legs in traffic. He’s skittish in the lane, especially when it comes to jumping, and that’s something he’ll either have to get over or learn to deal with it a new way. That’s obviously affecting his rebounding.

Moreover, the change in style on this team between Artest and the increased posting up of every position (except PG) will also affect those fundamentals. Until you are familiar with who is going to be doing what, when, you are going to struggle to be in the right place at the right time.

But how do you fix that? Reps. Do I wish everything was effortless and seamless right now? Sure. But if they do have to face adversity to strengthen their sense of identity and purpose, I’d much rather see them go through it now and, as happened last night, see them succeed despite some obvious difficulties.

Sorry if that consitutes horse blinders, but I guess I’m entitled to my own take too.

Kurt, is it safe to saw that the tension between Pau and Phil boils down to this:

Pau doesn’t feel like his body is ready to play, and Phil thinks Pau is being a wimp?

Is it also safe to say that Phil could have avoided this if he didn’t take the hard-line stance when Pau asked for the additional days off at the beginning of training camp?

It seems to me that Pau was exhausted at the beginning of training camp, and wanted additional days – Phil denied him because he felt it was important to start developing continuity with Ron in the offense.

Shortly thereafter, Pau tweaks his hamstring and is out for a few weeks – an injury that probably was the result of wear and tear.

Since then, Pau has felt like he should take the maximum time possible to rest his injury and let his body recuperate.

Phil, however, felt like it was solely Pau’s choice to play in the Euro Championships, and he did this for free. Jerry Buss, on the other hand, is paying him $16.5M this year to play for the Lakers. Phil feels like if his hamstring is good enough to play, he should play – it’s his job.

In fact, Phil (and the Laker org) went so far as to order an MRI and send it overseas to his family and his Spanish doctors to show that Pau not only had a very minor hamstring strain, but he was also well enough to play.

Pau, however, is still trying to maintain that his body doesn’t feel right to him, and he needs to rest to be in optimum shape.

Would you say that’s pretty close to what’s going on?

I like that he stayed out there and put in effort anyway, though he probably aggravated the sprain more by doing so.

I also half agree with ladlal in taking a loss tonight if it means we can keep Andrew and Pau healthy for the rest of the season… I’ll take a very close game, and accept a loss, but winning is my preference.

It doesn’t have to be a crushing defeat, or a blow-out, or even a game where the score is a lot closer than it actually was. It’s early in the season, and we’re still not playing with the line-ups that will eventually become the standard rotations. We’re not watching this season’s finished product yet… whatever problems the team has, would be solved just in time for Pau’s return, and all of a sudden we need new solutions for new problems.

Only Laker fans complain after winning 4 out of 5 games, hm?

DirtySanchez, at what point does any team play at a constant rate with the fundamentals through 82 games? Do people think that Andrew Bynum just forgot how to box out, or that it was mental focus for a few game, which he had back last night, then will slack off on again in a few weeks for a while?

This site has always tried to be about nuance. There certainly are things of concern this yearly in the season, the bench play being at the top of the list. But this is game six coming up, and come May the back-to-back against OKC/Houston will not matter. What will is if they have figured out the problems and grown enough to fix them. We need to allow time for that growth, I think. That is how PJ coaches, and he has 10 rings for a reason. Mitch was patient in the face of pressure to trade Bynum, and how did that work out? What we are simply saying is that sweeping changes now don’t make sense to us. People can disagree reasonably, and people can post that here. But if anyone comes in with an opinion, they need to be able to defend it with logics and facts.

And for the record everyone, I can tell you whatever I want on my blog. Whether you chose to listen/subscribe to it or not is your own choice.