OFFICIAL 2010-2011 NBA PLAYOFFS THREAD : VOL. MOST. ANTICIPATED. PLAYOFFS. EVER?

[CP1708]

Ok, my bad.  I thought you were saying all Kobe fans or something of the ilk. 

2.  *shrugs* 

 

[onetrust]

Originally Posted by CP1708

Ok, my bad.  I thought you were saying all Kobe fans or something of the ilk. 

2.  *shrugs* 

Naw man, i noticed that majority of the Laker fans felt Kobe didn't play a great game in that thread.

It's just when i saw the Phil quote i remember'd a few still tried to put blame on others so that's why i brought that up in here.



  

 

[onetrust]

Originally Posted by CP1708

Ok, my bad.  I thought you were saying all Kobe fans or something of the ilk. 

2.  *shrugs* 

Naw man, i noticed that majority of the Laker fans felt Kobe didn't play a great game in that thread.

It's just when i saw the Phil quote i remember'd a few still tried to put blame on others so that's why i brought that up in here.



  

 

[chester the cheetah]

Originally Posted by CP1708

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?

 

[chester the cheetah]

Originally Posted by CP1708

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?

 

[do be doo]

Originally Posted by Chester the Cheetah

CP1708 wrote:

---

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?
You should have bought your sweet heart an extra pair for Christmas.

  

 

[do be doo]

Originally Posted by Chester the Cheetah

CP1708 wrote:

---

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?
You should have bought your sweet heart an extra pair for Christmas.

  

 

[CP1708]

@#$% is a sweat heart? 

 

[CP1708]

@#$% is a sweat heart? 

 

[chester the cheetah]

Originally Posted by Do Be Doo

Originally Posted by Chester the Cheetah

CP1708 wrote:

---

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?

You should have bought your sweat heart an extra pair for Christmas.

Take your !+% to Amazon and buy yourself a dictionary.

 

[chester the cheetah]

Originally Posted by Do Be Doo

Originally Posted by Chester the Cheetah

CP1708 wrote:

---

I tried to look in on NT, but it's a pain in the @#$.  Print is too small.    

Forget your bifocals at work, Grandpa?

You should have bought your sweat heart an extra pair for Christmas.

Take your !+% to Amazon and buy yourself a dictionary.

 

[do be doo]

???

 

[do be doo]

???

 

[jpzx]

JPZ's wish may come true.

It shouldn't take any big pieces, IMO... both of their value is very low.

I'd be happy to bring them in with a package centered around Flynn/Brewer/etc.

What a makeover though... from McHale's Telfair, Foye, McCants, Gomes, Craig Smith, Jefferson, Love, Miller to Kahn's possible Rubio, Beasley, Love, Darko, Webster, Mayo, Flynn, Wes J, Randolph, Pekovic, etc. All this is hypothetical of course until the deal happens.

PG- Rubio
SG- Mayo
SF- Beasley
PF- Love
C- Darko

(and then Harrison Barnes, Perry Jones III, etc. whichever the Wolves get in the draft next summer)

We'll see.

 

[CP1708]

Maaaan, tell me you're kidding. 

 

[CP1708]

Maaaan, tell me you're kidding. 

 

[jpzx]

JPZ's wish may come true.

It shouldn't take any big pieces, IMO... both of their value is very low.

I'd be happy to bring them in with a package centered around Flynn/Brewer/etc.

What a makeover though... from McHale's Telfair, Foye, McCants, Gomes, Craig Smith, Jefferson, Love, Miller to Kahn's possible Rubio, Beasley, Love, Darko, Webster, Mayo, Flynn, Wes J, Randolph, Pekovic, etc. All this is hypothetical of course until the deal happens.

PG- Rubio
SG- Mayo
SF- Beasley
PF- Love
C- Darko

(and then Harrison Barnes, Perry Jones III, etc. whichever the Wolves get in the draft next summer)

We'll see.

 

[proshares]

Originally Posted by CP1708

@#$% is a sweat heart? 

  

 

[proshares]

Originally Posted by CP1708

@#$% is a sweat heart? 

  

 

[blazers21ntnp]

Originally Posted by CP1708


Maaaan, tell me you're kidding. 

Big Mike status.

 

[blazers21ntnp]

Originally Posted by CP1708


Maaaan, tell me you're kidding. 

Big Mike status.

 

[proshares]

SAN ANTONIO -- Let's start the morning with a sobering fact for Los Angeles Lakers fans: In NBA history, 361 teams have lost three straight games by 15 or more points.

Want to know how many of them won the title?

Would you believe one of them? It's true -- according to Elias, only the 1977-78 Washington Bullets went on to win a championship after dropping three straight by such margins during the regular season. And that Bullets team, I would add, was arguably the worst champion in league history.

All of which is part of the new reality for a Lakers team that is rapidly losing its sheen as the alpha dog in the Western Conference. The San Antonio Spurs are now six games ahead of the Lakers in the standings and just beat them handily head-to-head, while L.A. is icing its wounds after losing by 19 to Milwaukee, 16 to Miami and now 15 to the Spurs.

(This, incidentally, is one reason I keep harping on scoring margin as a predictor of future success or failure. Good teams, even great ones, can easily lose three straight games by close margins and march on. But getting your brains beat in three straight? Normally that is a much greater indicator of quality, or rather the lack of it. In fact, the last time it happened to the Lakers, in 2006-07, they finished with 42 wins.)

While no sane person would put the Lakers' odds of repeating as low as 1-in-361, it does offer a shot glass full of reality. Moreover, it's tough to blame this slump on injuries because all their key players are in the lineup -- and one of the losses was to a Milwaukee team fielding a skeleton crew itself.

Maybe it's not 1-in-361, but more like 1-in-15. Those appear to be the real-world chances of a team finishing the season third or lower in the conference's home-court advantage hierarchy winning a title since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ushered in the modern era of NBA basketball. Only two teams since 1980 -- the 1995 Rockets, as a No. 6 seed, and the 2007 Spurs, as a No.3 -- have pulled if off.

The Lakers seem to be careening toward a No. 3 seed, if not an even worse fate, as they rapidly lose contact with San Antonio and Dallas in the Western Conference hierarchy. The Spurs are basically gone into the sunset now, six games ahead of L.A. Barring injuries becoming a decisive factor, the Lakers appear to need to sweep the teams' last three meetings to have any realistic chance of catching San Antonio. Meanwhile, the Mavs, with a 3½-game bulge, are also threatening to leave L.A. in their dust.

And don't look now, but the Utah Jazz are tied with L.A. and the Oklahoma City Thunder are within a half-game, which means that if the Lakers don't get their act together, they will likely have to win four straight series on the road to defend their title.

Before we go further, allow me to emphasize as heartily as I can that absolutely nobody is ready to write off the Lakers just yet. We're not even to the point of sharpening pencils. And for what it's worth, both coaches downplayed the importance of home-court advantage when I asked them about it last night before the game.

"If it was offered throughout the playoffs, no one would turn it down," said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. "But I think the best team still has a way of winning even if that team didn't have home court all the way through."

"Playoff teams ought to win on the road in the playoffs," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson. "It's important, [but] this time of the season it's hard to talk about it. It's just way too early."

He's right that there's plenty of time for L.A. to recover, and if the Lakers did regain their footing and win a title it wouldn't be the first time a Jackson team rallied from a rocky regular-season stretch.

Nonetheless, this string of beatings has focused attention on the Lakers' warts. In particular, it's been odd to see the Lakers' offense implode after the team led the league in Offensive Efficiency early in the season. In fact, the Lakers are defending as well as they have all season, holding nine of their past 10 opponents under the century mark.

But on offense? They've scored 79, 80 and 82 points the past three games. After busting the century mark 13 times in their first 14 games, they've cleared it just five times in the 17 games since.

That, to me, is the real quandary facing L.A. right now: What the heck happened to the offense? There's plenty of blame to go around, but let me offer up some of the most likely suspects.

First, let me to tell you what's not the problem: Kobe shooting too much. While he jacked up 27 shots in 31 minutes last night, for only 21 points, he had been very tame the previous seven games and it hadn't helped much. While he obviously helped shoot L.A. out of the game last night, I wouldn't call this a persistent problem of late.

Here are some of the issues:

Regression to the mean

So did we really think Shannon Brown and Lamar Odom were going to shoot 50 percent on 3s all season and close to 60 percent overall from the floor?

"Regression to the mean" says that players and teams will tend to return to normal over time.

In retrospect, I think we can safely say a portion of L.A.'s recent slump was predictable, given the outlandishly good results those two players compiled early in the year. The dynamic duo combined to go 4-for-20 against San Antonio, and they are 23-of-61 (37.7 percent) in the three-game skid.

They won't be that bad going forward, but I also doubt they'll be as good as they were the first month.

Pau Gasol doesn't appear to be 100 percent

Jackson alluded to Gasol's "poor base" after the Miami game, but we've yet to learn anything more.

While we don't know the exact nature of what's wrong, we do have eyes. Gasol certainly seemed to lack his usual burst of quickness and open-court speed last night, and not for the first time lately. He remains skilled enough to score over opponents, but I haven't seen a good, sharp, quick move to the cup from him in a while.

This might run deeper than L.A.'s two other long-running Gasol issues -- that the guards periodically forget he's on the team, and that the Lakers played him way too many minutes in November. The fatigue issue is an important one to watch later in the season, but I'd be surprised if he were already feeling the effects so strongly this early in the schedule after taking the summer off.

What we do know is that (a) Gasol averaged 20 and 12 in November and was a leading MVP candidate; (b) in December he's averaging 16 and 9, and his shooting percentage has also dropped off a cliff, from 54.1 percent to 46.9 percent; and (c) last night he was held to single digits despite being defended for long stretches by Matt Bonner and DeJuan Blair.

Will their point guards ever score a basket?

This wasn't an issue as long as the other guys were clicking -- L.A.'s point guards are expected to be little more than initiators who make an entry pass and then spot up for a long-range jumper. Derek Fisher and Steve Blake have handled that part of their job description ably, hitting 40.0 percent and 41.7 percent respectively on 3-pointers.

But the complete lack of any additional production from the point guards becomes glaring when the other facets of L.A.'s offense struggle. Blake and Fisher are two of the league's worst 2-point shooters -- Blake has made nine 2-point baskets the entire season and is shooting 23.1 percent inside the arc, while Fisher is at 37.7 percent. And because they're so bad inside the arc and rarely draw fouls, each has a True Shooting Percentage below the league average despite the stellar 3-point shooting.

Worse yet, because they strain so much to create offense, they have high turnover rates -- a no-no for spot-up specialists. Fisher twice committed offensive fouls last night trying to use Earl Campbell stiff-arms to get himself into the paint, while Blake's forays have been even more disastrous -- 14.7 percent of his possessions end in miscues.

Finally, their per-40-minute production is downright piddling: 10.5 points and 4.0 assists for Fisher, and 9.9 points and 4.2 assists for Blake. (That's per 40 minutes played by each player, not per game.)

Add it all up, and L.A. has two of the league's bottom six point guards in PER.

The formula is for Blake and Fisher to be low-usage players who focus on defense and 3-pointers, so they're never going to be at the top of the PER charts. But they simply have to be more effective and efficient. L.A. could live with their minimalist output when everyone else was going gangbusters, but the recent slump has spotlighted their shortcomings. In the three-game skid the Blisher combo is 5-of-25 from the floor with 11 turnovers -- a totally unacceptable performance.

All in all, while everyone still fears this team's talent, the Lakers have some problems. Maybe they figure it out and we all laugh it off this June, but based on the 1-in-361 stat up top, this recent skid seems a bit more serious than just a midyear malaise from a bored team waiting 'til May.

So how do the Lakers get back up to the top of the mountain?

They get Gasol back on track, get the point guards producing and bang out some more regular-season wins. Either that, or they're going to dig themselves a hole that ensures an extremely difficult playoff draw come spring.

 

[proshares]

SAN ANTONIO -- Let's start the morning with a sobering fact for Los Angeles Lakers fans: In NBA history, 361 teams have lost three straight games by 15 or more points.

Want to know how many of them won the title?

Would you believe one of them? It's true -- according to Elias, only the 1977-78 Washington Bullets went on to win a championship after dropping three straight by such margins during the regular season. And that Bullets team, I would add, was arguably the worst champion in league history.

All of which is part of the new reality for a Lakers team that is rapidly losing its sheen as the alpha dog in the Western Conference. The San Antonio Spurs are now six games ahead of the Lakers in the standings and just beat them handily head-to-head, while L.A. is icing its wounds after losing by 19 to Milwaukee, 16 to Miami and now 15 to the Spurs.

(This, incidentally, is one reason I keep harping on scoring margin as a predictor of future success or failure. Good teams, even great ones, can easily lose three straight games by close margins and march on. But getting your brains beat in three straight? Normally that is a much greater indicator of quality, or rather the lack of it. In fact, the last time it happened to the Lakers, in 2006-07, they finished with 42 wins.)

While no sane person would put the Lakers' odds of repeating as low as 1-in-361, it does offer a shot glass full of reality. Moreover, it's tough to blame this slump on injuries because all their key players are in the lineup -- and one of the losses was to a Milwaukee team fielding a skeleton crew itself.

Maybe it's not 1-in-361, but more like 1-in-15. Those appear to be the real-world chances of a team finishing the season third or lower in the conference's home-court advantage hierarchy winning a title since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ushered in the modern era of NBA basketball. Only two teams since 1980 -- the 1995 Rockets, as a No. 6 seed, and the 2007 Spurs, as a No.3 -- have pulled if off.

The Lakers seem to be careening toward a No. 3 seed, if not an even worse fate, as they rapidly lose contact with San Antonio and Dallas in the Western Conference hierarchy. The Spurs are basically gone into the sunset now, six games ahead of L.A. Barring injuries becoming a decisive factor, the Lakers appear to need to sweep the teams' last three meetings to have any realistic chance of catching San Antonio. Meanwhile, the Mavs, with a 3½-game bulge, are also threatening to leave L.A. in their dust.

And don't look now, but the Utah Jazz are tied with L.A. and the Oklahoma City Thunder are within a half-game, which means that if the Lakers don't get their act together, they will likely have to win four straight series on the road to defend their title.

Before we go further, allow me to emphasize as heartily as I can that absolutely nobody is ready to write off the Lakers just yet. We're not even to the point of sharpening pencils. And for what it's worth, both coaches downplayed the importance of home-court advantage when I asked them about it last night before the game.

"If it was offered throughout the playoffs, no one would turn it down," said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. "But I think the best team still has a way of winning even if that team didn't have home court all the way through."

"Playoff teams ought to win on the road in the playoffs," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson. "It's important, [but] this time of the season it's hard to talk about it. It's just way too early."

He's right that there's plenty of time for L.A. to recover, and if the Lakers did regain their footing and win a title it wouldn't be the first time a Jackson team rallied from a rocky regular-season stretch.

Nonetheless, this string of beatings has focused attention on the Lakers' warts. In particular, it's been odd to see the Lakers' offense implode after the team led the league in Offensive Efficiency early in the season. In fact, the Lakers are defending as well as they have all season, holding nine of their past 10 opponents under the century mark.

But on offense? They've scored 79, 80 and 82 points the past three games. After busting the century mark 13 times in their first 14 games, they've cleared it just five times in the 17 games since.

That, to me, is the real quandary facing L.A. right now: What the heck happened to the offense? There's plenty of blame to go around, but let me offer up some of the most likely suspects.

First, let me to tell you what's not the problem: Kobe shooting too much. While he jacked up 27 shots in 31 minutes last night, for only 21 points, he had been very tame the previous seven games and it hadn't helped much. While he obviously helped shoot L.A. out of the game last night, I wouldn't call this a persistent problem of late.

Here are some of the issues:

Regression to the mean

So did we really think Shannon Brown and Lamar Odom were going to shoot 50 percent on 3s all season and close to 60 percent overall from the floor?

"Regression to the mean" says that players and teams will tend to return to normal over time.

In retrospect, I think we can safely say a portion of L.A.'s recent slump was predictable, given the outlandishly good results those two players compiled early in the year. The dynamic duo combined to go 4-for-20 against San Antonio, and they are 23-of-61 (37.7 percent) in the three-game skid.

They won't be that bad going forward, but I also doubt they'll be as good as they were the first month.

Pau Gasol doesn't appear to be 100 percent

Jackson alluded to Gasol's "poor base" after the Miami game, but we've yet to learn anything more.

While we don't know the exact nature of what's wrong, we do have eyes. Gasol certainly seemed to lack his usual burst of quickness and open-court speed last night, and not for the first time lately. He remains skilled enough to score over opponents, but I haven't seen a good, sharp, quick move to the cup from him in a while.

This might run deeper than L.A.'s two other long-running Gasol issues -- that the guards periodically forget he's on the team, and that the Lakers played him way too many minutes in November. The fatigue issue is an important one to watch later in the season, but I'd be surprised if he were already feeling the effects so strongly this early in the schedule after taking the summer off.

What we do know is that (a) Gasol averaged 20 and 12 in November and was a leading MVP candidate; (b) in December he's averaging 16 and 9, and his shooting percentage has also dropped off a cliff, from 54.1 percent to 46.9 percent; and (c) last night he was held to single digits despite being defended for long stretches by Matt Bonner and DeJuan Blair.

Will their point guards ever score a basket?

This wasn't an issue as long as the other guys were clicking -- L.A.'s point guards are expected to be little more than initiators who make an entry pass and then spot up for a long-range jumper. Derek Fisher and Steve Blake have handled that part of their job description ably, hitting 40.0 percent and 41.7 percent respectively on 3-pointers.

But the complete lack of any additional production from the point guards becomes glaring when the other facets of L.A.'s offense struggle. Blake and Fisher are two of the league's worst 2-point shooters -- Blake has made nine 2-point baskets the entire season and is shooting 23.1 percent inside the arc, while Fisher is at 37.7 percent. And because they're so bad inside the arc and rarely draw fouls, each has a True Shooting Percentage below the league average despite the stellar 3-point shooting.

Worse yet, because they strain so much to create offense, they have high turnover rates -- a no-no for spot-up specialists. Fisher twice committed offensive fouls last night trying to use Earl Campbell stiff-arms to get himself into the paint, while Blake's forays have been even more disastrous -- 14.7 percent of his possessions end in miscues.

Finally, their per-40-minute production is downright piddling: 10.5 points and 4.0 assists for Fisher, and 9.9 points and 4.2 assists for Blake. (That's per 40 minutes played by each player, not per game.)

Add it all up, and L.A. has two of the league's bottom six point guards in PER.

The formula is for Blake and Fisher to be low-usage players who focus on defense and 3-pointers, so they're never going to be at the top of the PER charts. But they simply have to be more effective and efficient. L.A. could live with their minimalist output when everyone else was going gangbusters, but the recent slump has spotlighted their shortcomings. In the three-game skid the Blisher combo is 5-of-25 from the floor with 11 turnovers -- a totally unacceptable performance.

All in all, while everyone still fears this team's talent, the Lakers have some problems. Maybe they figure it out and we all laugh it off this June, but based on the 1-in-361 stat up top, this recent skid seems a bit more serious than just a midyear malaise from a bored team waiting 'til May.

So how do the Lakers get back up to the top of the mountain?

They get Gasol back on track, get the point guards producing and bang out some more regular-season wins. Either that, or they're going to dig themselves a hole that ensures an extremely difficult playoff draw come spring.

 

[bhzmafia14]

Lol at them keep saying OJ unhappy.

And give us Wes Johnson and a 1st (top 3) protected. We have no need for Brewer. We would take someone with sonme upside. If OJ value is low, why trade him? We need his 15+ points off the bench, so i dont see a trade happening anyway unless it was something we couldnt refuse.

If this team is trying to make the playoffs, dont trade your 3 best players. Ill attempt to deal some combo like henry, sam, thabeet for veterans that can help the team. Preferably, a backup PG and versatile center.

start tony allen and there ya go.

 

[bhzmafia14]

Lol at them keep saying OJ unhappy.

And give us Wes Johnson and a 1st (top 3) protected. We have no need for Brewer. We would take someone with sonme upside. If OJ value is low, why trade him? We need his 15+ points off the bench, so i dont see a trade happening anyway unless it was something we couldnt refuse.

If this team is trying to make the playoffs, dont trade your 3 best players. Ill attempt to deal some combo like henry, sam, thabeet for veterans that can help the team. Preferably, a backup PG and versatile center.

start tony allen and there ya go.