NBA Playoffs 2012 - Page 31

On May 02 2012 19:27 Vindicare605 wrote:


I don't know.

I saw a ton of holes in the Lakers play today other than just Kobe's shot selection that gave away that 18 point lead. Namely Denver's offensive rebounding and very poor transition defense.

It's always a chicken and the egg question when it comes to this stuff. Does the Lakers offense start to stagnate before Kobe starts shooting a lot, or does Kobe's shooting stagnate the offense? Tonight it wasn't really clear to me.

Also you have to consider that a lot of Kobe's shots came late in the shot clock as part of half court offense. The shots he takes that always bug me are the ones that are way early in the shot clock in semi-transition. Today his shots were usually within the flow of the offense and he got a lot of his points in the paint or in the post.

The thing that matters to me most though, is that Kobe made the shots that counted down the stretch and the Lakers came away with the win. He's a popular fall guy and scapegoat for others though and I understand why as much as I don't agree with it most times.

However between Kobe's 38 and Bynum's 27 they scored about 60% of the team's points in just two players. To me that's usually indicative of poor all around offense than it is Kobe hogging the ball. The team missed a lot of easy shots and Kobe tonight was really the only perimeter threat all game which is a common trend throughout the regular season.

Still. After absolutely dominating the first game, today's victory as sloppy as it was doesn't concern me TOO much.

On May 03 2012 02:29 XaI)CyRiC wrote:


I generally didn't have a problem with how Kobe played either. It's hard to say he shouldn't be attacking when he's having such a good shooting night and Denver is opting for single coverage. It's apparent that Denver's strategy was to try to let Kobe have his while limiting what the bigs did, so Kobe took what they gave him.

A lot of the more questionable shots Kobe took were late in the game in situations where they had taken too long to initiate their offense and were left with an expiring shotblock. Personally, I think the Lakers took the whole "slow the pace" idea a little too far near the end, as they started walking the ball up the court and not initiating their offense until 8-10 seconds had already passed on the shotblock. That led to insufficient time to properly feed the post, and then take advantage of the collapsing defense.

Kobe taking over was also necessary because the other Lakers weren't making their perimeter shots, i.e. Sessions, Blake, and Barnes. Surpisingly, Ebanks was the one who consistently knocked down open jumpers this game, which was key even though he was taking long 2's and not 3's. With the Nuggets collapsing so much on the bigs all game, Kobe was arguably a better option. He just started to struggle when they put Gallinari on him, who he should've been using his speed advantage to get around but instead opted to post and shoot contested fadeaways against.

I was impressed that Bynum managed to play so efficiently again this game, despite the extra attention he was getting all night from Denver. That's two straight games with great FG% and almost no TO's. His defense and rebounding were not as impressive as I'd have liked, but part of that was the Lakers losing sight of their gameplan and allowing the Nuggets to get out and run.

Gasol had a great game I thought, playing good defense, hitting his perimeter shots, and playmaking as well as any PG. That one play where he received an inbound pass from Barnes at halfcourt and drove the ball down the court like a 7' guard to dish it to Bynum was beautiful and served as a reminder of just how versatile and skilled he is.

Really liking how Ebanks is playing, he just needs to work on his FT shooting. Blake had one of those extremely frustrating games where he contributed almost nothing except TO's and missed 3's. Barnes was pretty much a non-factor, but did the little things here and there. Hill continues to be a great energy big off the bench, and is meshing so well and so quickly with Bynum and Gasol. Sessions had a solid game, and I'm glad that he wasn't afraid to make big plays at the end of the game when the Nuggets started focusing back on Kobe.

The Lakers definitely got an idea of how easily they can lose to Denver if they let them run and get careless on offense, so hopefully they'll take the lesson to heart and re-focus in Game 3. I'm glad they're going to Denver up 2-0, because I was really concerned they'd let Game 2 slip due to overconfidence from the first game and because Denver is the type of team that can punish a complacent or unfocused component. I feel good about the Lakers chances because Denver still has no answer for their size, and the Lakers are getting solid contributions from their role players. I just hope Kobe doesn't take the first two games as a green light for him to overdo things in the next few games, as they are doing great working from the inside out.