Building a team is as much about the assets you have as the ones you hope to obtain. You want more shooters? How about a lock down wing defender? What about a hustling big man who does all the dirty work or a shot creator from the back court who can generate offense when the shot […]
Dwight Howard
Lakers/Spurs: Gut Check Reveals Guts
Sunday night marked the arrival of a new, long-term houseguest in Lakerland – the ghost of roster future. In the absence of Kobe Bryant – a scenario initially not expected to come to fruition for handful of years – all eyes will be on Dwight Howard to recapture his MVP form of years past and […]
The Lakers’ Season-Long Defensive Woes In One Play
And just think about execution, what are we going to do? You’ve got to look at what teams are doing against us in terms of spreading us out and rolling a big and now we collapse and now we’re late to the shooters. This is about the third game in a row where that’s happened […]
Lakers’ Crunch Time Usage Rates Tell a Story That Needs Revising
I’ve long struggled with the idea of “crunch time”. At times I’ve felt the definition used to describe this part of the game — the last 5 minutes of a game with a margin of 5 points or fewer — is a bit arbitrary. This feeling is compounded by the fact that I’m a firm […]
Wednesday Storylines
Dwight Howard stepped to the free throw line and took a deep breath. Dwight stepped to the free throw line. The free throw line. The line. Again and again, 39 times, matching his total number of points. It’s a lot of times at the line. It’s a lot of points. It was his first trip […]
The Breakdown: Screening Their Way to Success
In beating the Bulls, the Lakers really showed how they can manipulate very good defenses with screen actions designed to get their best players makable shots. This was especially true late in the game where the Lakers picked on Carlos Boozer on multiple consecutive possessions in order to close out the game. Of all the […]
Friday Forum
The glow of the Lakers’ galvanizing fourth-quarter comeback on Wednesday still lingers but the next bend lies right ahead. It’s a big night for western teams on the playoff fringe. Houston visits Golden State, Utah visits Chicago and the Lakers host Toronto. What does this mean? Golden State has a two-game edge on Houston, possesses […]
Dwight Howard and the Future
“The only thing that matters is the present right now,” Howard said when asked about his free agency. “There’s no need for me to talk about what happens at the end of the season, and there’s no need to go back and forth about it. I just feel like, at the end of the year, […]
Wednesday Storylines
Last night I watched news coverage of a burning house. And continued to watch the burning house. And I asked myself, how will CNN manage to tear themselves away from this all-consuming event? They wouldn’t go with a split-screen for the State of the Union would they? And then I watched the annual address and […]
Preview and Chat: The Charlotte Bobcats
Records: Lakers 23-27 (10th in the West), Bobcats 11-37 (15th in the East) Offensive ratings: Lakers 105.1 (8th in the NBA), Bobcats 98.7 (29th in the NBA) Defensive ratings: Lakers 103.2 (t-17th in the NBA), Bobcats 108.7 (30th in the NBA) Projected Starting Lineups: Lakers: Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace, Earl Clark, Dwight […]