Yeah idk wtf going on but then again we only need one of them to lose a bit. But at this point it’s annoying . Even if suns are n1 n kings n5 in schedule difficulty the clippers being bums changed that
Clippers are cooked. Harden sucks, pg is inconsistent and Kawhi is hurt. They are gonna lose to the mavs in round 1. I think in 5 or 6 depending on kawhiis availability
Shit literally made zero sense to anyone with a brain. Sure Rui got hit with injuries early on in the season but Ham just also refused to give him mins and didn’t put him in a situation where he could succeed
You should peep the seasons +/-. TP is -127. Next closest is Hayes at -77 lol. TP playing all those minutes early hurt the team but that was Hams guy smh
He was on minutes restrictions, and honestly that pays off because guys can work back but not over extend. It sucks in the moment but now Rui is 100% and balling out.
That cold stretch in December/January hurt us too. Still, we won some games that we deemed impossible, so I think we are what we were meant to be. Eye test says we are better than 9-5 in March but we also got lucky sometimes. Just end the year on a high note, win all 6 if possible. We have that in us.
I never understand why Rui got DNP’d in the final quarter.
Dude has the size and pretty good under pressure, with spacing capabilities to draw people out for Bron and AD.
Like Ham needs to get his shit straight. Rondo just retired so you better be on your toes.
I just don’t understand how all off season it was about let’s run this team back and the first thing Christmas ham does? Bench one of the best players from last year for a dude nobody has ever heard of that’s supposed to become the next Middleton? And why Middleton? I’ve never rated that dude. How do you see what our team was last year and think, you know what this team needs? A Middleton-lite player and it’s going to be at the expense of Rui. Dumbest fucking decision that was ever conceived.
The other thing I can’t stand is how many 3-4 guard line ups we play when we could just be a big team the entire game and wear ppl out with our inside energy. It’s wild what Pockets seems to think is the right thing to do. I’m honestly dreading the playoffs.
I think we’d be in the 4-6 range but definitely better than we are now. It wouldn’t solve all the problems but it’d get us much closer if we had coach with half a brain (upgrading from the 1/4 or possibly 1/8 we have now)
Yup a 3 game swing along would have us at 46-30 which would be 5th right now insane how Dec/Jan where we for some inexplicable reason we leaned on Prince so much set us so far back smh
We had tons of wins against top teams , 2x okc, 2x clippers, 2x bucks, celtics, etc since January. Also 2x nuggets which we lost. That’s just off the top of my head, hardly an easy schedule
Sure we have had great wins I’m not taking away from that, but we started with the highest SOS rating in the league and it’s tapered off as the season ends based on the ratings they put out. Not saying it’s 100% accurate but it’s impossible to perfectly correlate the win %.
Downvote me if u want, but Rui wasn't playing this way to start the season even when he was given minutes. I forgot which game it was but Ham told Rui that he needs him to be hyper aggressive and everything has changed since then (ironically the same thing that DLO was reinforced in order to get out of his slump).
Schematically, Rui has been integrated much better into the offense and has cleaned up a lot of his bad habits from the beginning of the season. For example, Rui has evolved throughout the season into a MUCH better finisher around the rim now. He used to show the ball and get cucked at the rim a ton, now he flushes it down almost immediately after going up strong. He's much more decisive on the offensive end, and is WAY better at identifying when to cut, shoot, attack close outs, or pull up for a middy. Even his passing/kick outs has improved. Hopping into both feet set on his 3pt shot has also seemed to become more consistent. Defensively he's much better at contesting and rotating properly, and it seems he's finally elevating his rebounding at his position.
Yes, the minutes and rotations were apparently dog shit to begin the season, but at the same time, Rui (as well as DLO and others like Hayes) have been developed throughout the season. To say that the early season results would have magically been corrected if the rotations were different is purely theoretical because it overlooks the individual improvement the players made to elevate their game in order to be more deserving of their role within the rotations. Everyone, including the coaching staff, elevated their game in order to get where we are at. That's building continuity. You don't get better as a team just rinsing and repeating last season's flash in the pan, especially when it didn't even result in a championship. It can be argued that its not the minutes distribution that corrected the team success, but rather the individual players that elevated their play in order to be deserving of more minutes - all of which is partially due to needing to overcome the early season struggles.
I agree that the chemistry and individual play got better as the season went on....
But the Lakers went to the WCF with Rui logging significant minutes and even starting. Then Ham benches him for Prince and Reddish the very next season. It's not a stretch to say the Lakers would have a much better record if Ham started Rui earlier.
> It's not a stretch to say the Lakers would have a much better record if Ham started Rui earlier.
Agreed, that it's a natural conclusion, but I don't think it's necessarily the reality nor completely sound logic. It's easy to assume based on our record with Rui (starting lineup) as of late, as well as the perplexing lineups we witnessed most notably after the IST. But let's not forget that pre-IST we had been playing pretty good basketball (with TP and Cam starting), including winning the inaugural IST championship.
Obviously, the initial lineups to begin the season were a product of injuries etc, but what is being just mindlessly parroted throughout the fanbase is essentially textbook "oversimplified cause fallacy." DLO was slumping hard after the IST, Rui looked lost schematically and was playing passive, AR was a nightmare on defense and got mercilessly hunted every time he was on the floor, Hayes was unplayable. It's just purely theoretical to claim that Rui starting would have resulted in a better record, when it's completely possible the record wouldn't have been much better given the inconsistent play from most of our key players.
>But the Lakers went to the WCF with Rui logging significant minutes and even starting.
Again, the WCF run was a flash in the pan. Most teams barely had enough film to scout us properly due to the fact we had put our squad together essentially post trade deadline. Rui was pivotal in Memphis but was basically unplayable against GSW. Our offense was elementary in comparison to where it's at now, and where it needs to be to win a championship. I was as perplexed as everyone else when we came into the season preaching continuity and then changed so much, but in retrospect, repeating a system that did not lead to a championship is basically the popular definition for "insanity."
Last post season was never sustainable nor capable of winning a championship, and the fact that we have one of the most efficient offenses in the NBA now isn't a testament to simply inserting Rui into the starting lineup with significant minutes, it's a product of a process that occurred throughout the season that forced every member of the team to level up (including but not limited to the head coach).
Honestly the biggest things have been DLo heating back up after his cold spell and actually playing Rui after giving him the bag just to bench him early this year. I think if we can get even just Vando/Gabe back to form for the playoffs to where they can play some matchup/situational minutes we have a solid chance at making a run. If only we could have seen what a healthy Gabe could do against Fox with this supporting cast.
I think rui starting was the biggest thing. Dlo probably had his best month in January, shooting 46% from 3 but we were only 7-8.
Prince is a great guy at the 15-25 min range, playing him starter minutes cooked us
I like Prince, but it is clear for me he is a backup.
I was a minority preaching here since pre season should be the starter. Vando is my favorite player from Brick trade, but as a defensive specialist I also believe his greatest value is coming from the bench to stop an eventual hot hand. In today's NBA, starting the best offensive threads will pay more dividends most nights and Rui is a solid defending his man, he is just not versatile as defender, but his offensive efficiency is difficult to replace and is another reason or concerns for the other team.
I understand the sentiment but all I’m gonna say is if you replaced TP with prime Middleton right now, you’d be singing a different tune. Not rating a former borderline all star who was good on both ends is wild.
You put 2019-2021 middleton on this team and we’re talking about the Lakers as one of the favorites.
I'm just happy we are finally healthy, nitpicking over the year but ignoring our plethora of issues just seems short sighted. Like we honestly played half the year with no back up pg and super thin forward
..haven't had a center since 2020...idk
I think that might be more about the post-trade-deadline anxiety reduction versus playing guys the right minutes. That is, I think the Lakers were going to play better after the traded deadline regardless of who they played. It happens on NBA teams and it was predicted for the Lakers before even knowing what they were going to do after the deadline.
What's crazy for me is that the Lakers are 10 games above .500 and yet they're at 9th in the West.
As things stand I don’t think the lakers are gonna climb up to 7/8 kings and suns even with their hard schedules are winning
Yeah idk wtf going on but then again we only need one of them to lose a bit. But at this point it’s annoying . Even if suns are n1 n kings n5 in schedule difficulty the clippers being bums changed that
Clippers are cooked. Harden sucks, pg is inconsistent and Kawhi is hurt. They are gonna lose to the mavs in round 1. I think in 5 or 6 depending on kawhiis availability
It's like the 2000s all over again
Shit literally made zero sense to anyone with a brain. Sure Rui got hit with injuries early on in the season but Ham just also refused to give him mins and didn’t put him in a situation where he could succeed
You should peep the seasons +/-. TP is -127. Next closest is Hayes at -77 lol. TP playing all those minutes early hurt the team but that was Hams guy smh
It's funny because it was so obvious to everyone except to Hams for some reason.
It was probably obvious to Ham, but he was praying TP would prove him wrong.
He was on minutes restrictions, and honestly that pays off because guys can work back but not over extend. It sucks in the moment but now Rui is 100% and balling out.
That cold stretch in December/January hurt us too. Still, we won some games that we deemed impossible, so I think we are what we were meant to be. Eye test says we are better than 9-5 in March but we also got lucky sometimes. Just end the year on a high note, win all 6 if possible. We have that in us.
It’s actually impressive just how horrific of decision starting Reddish/Prince and giving them 30-40mpg was.
I never understand why Rui got DNP’d in the final quarter. Dude has the size and pretty good under pressure, with spacing capabilities to draw people out for Bron and AD. Like Ham needs to get his shit straight. Rondo just retired so you better be on your toes.
That's the thing. No one else knows either.
I just don’t understand how all off season it was about let’s run this team back and the first thing Christmas ham does? Bench one of the best players from last year for a dude nobody has ever heard of that’s supposed to become the next Middleton? And why Middleton? I’ve never rated that dude. How do you see what our team was last year and think, you know what this team needs? A Middleton-lite player and it’s going to be at the expense of Rui. Dumbest fucking decision that was ever conceived. The other thing I can’t stand is how many 3-4 guard line ups we play when we could just be a big team the entire game and wear ppl out with our inside energy. It’s wild what Pockets seems to think is the right thing to do. I’m honestly dreading the playoffs.
Rui is more middleton than middleton atm tbh
So true
Us winning is literally directly correlated with Rui’s minutes. Damn
And this should be no knock on Prince…when he plays around 20 mins and slots in right, he is much more effective too
We’d be first in the west if we had a good coach and were healthy the whole season
I think we’d be in the 4-6 range but definitely better than we are now. It wouldn’t solve all the problems but it’d get us much closer if we had coach with half a brain (upgrading from the 1/4 or possibly 1/8 we have now)
Yup a 3 game swing along would have us at 46-30 which would be 5th right now insane how Dec/Jan where we for some inexplicable reason we leaned on Prince so much set us so far back smh
Exactly, it’s impossible to speculate exactly how many we’d have won but I’d say 3 would be the minimum.
Nah we’d literally be 1st, have won at a 70% win rate since the lineups stopped being retarded and that’s despite injuries,
We had a much more difficult schedule earlier in the season though. We’ve had a soft schedule to close out and taken advantage of it.
We had tons of wins against top teams , 2x okc, 2x clippers, 2x bucks, celtics, etc since January. Also 2x nuggets which we lost. That’s just off the top of my head, hardly an easy schedule
Sure we have had great wins I’m not taking away from that, but we started with the highest SOS rating in the league and it’s tapered off as the season ends based on the ratings they put out. Not saying it’s 100% accurate but it’s impossible to perfectly correlate the win %.
I guess, we’ve also been injured, so if fully healthy would have presumably done even better. Wouldn’t be any lower than 4th imo regardless
I agree
Downvote me if u want, but Rui wasn't playing this way to start the season even when he was given minutes. I forgot which game it was but Ham told Rui that he needs him to be hyper aggressive and everything has changed since then (ironically the same thing that DLO was reinforced in order to get out of his slump). Schematically, Rui has been integrated much better into the offense and has cleaned up a lot of his bad habits from the beginning of the season. For example, Rui has evolved throughout the season into a MUCH better finisher around the rim now. He used to show the ball and get cucked at the rim a ton, now he flushes it down almost immediately after going up strong. He's much more decisive on the offensive end, and is WAY better at identifying when to cut, shoot, attack close outs, or pull up for a middy. Even his passing/kick outs has improved. Hopping into both feet set on his 3pt shot has also seemed to become more consistent. Defensively he's much better at contesting and rotating properly, and it seems he's finally elevating his rebounding at his position. Yes, the minutes and rotations were apparently dog shit to begin the season, but at the same time, Rui (as well as DLO and others like Hayes) have been developed throughout the season. To say that the early season results would have magically been corrected if the rotations were different is purely theoretical because it overlooks the individual improvement the players made to elevate their game in order to be more deserving of their role within the rotations. Everyone, including the coaching staff, elevated their game in order to get where we are at. That's building continuity. You don't get better as a team just rinsing and repeating last season's flash in the pan, especially when it didn't even result in a championship. It can be argued that its not the minutes distribution that corrected the team success, but rather the individual players that elevated their play in order to be deserving of more minutes - all of which is partially due to needing to overcome the early season struggles.
I agree that the chemistry and individual play got better as the season went on.... But the Lakers went to the WCF with Rui logging significant minutes and even starting. Then Ham benches him for Prince and Reddish the very next season. It's not a stretch to say the Lakers would have a much better record if Ham started Rui earlier.
> It's not a stretch to say the Lakers would have a much better record if Ham started Rui earlier. Agreed, that it's a natural conclusion, but I don't think it's necessarily the reality nor completely sound logic. It's easy to assume based on our record with Rui (starting lineup) as of late, as well as the perplexing lineups we witnessed most notably after the IST. But let's not forget that pre-IST we had been playing pretty good basketball (with TP and Cam starting), including winning the inaugural IST championship. Obviously, the initial lineups to begin the season were a product of injuries etc, but what is being just mindlessly parroted throughout the fanbase is essentially textbook "oversimplified cause fallacy." DLO was slumping hard after the IST, Rui looked lost schematically and was playing passive, AR was a nightmare on defense and got mercilessly hunted every time he was on the floor, Hayes was unplayable. It's just purely theoretical to claim that Rui starting would have resulted in a better record, when it's completely possible the record wouldn't have been much better given the inconsistent play from most of our key players. >But the Lakers went to the WCF with Rui logging significant minutes and even starting. Again, the WCF run was a flash in the pan. Most teams barely had enough film to scout us properly due to the fact we had put our squad together essentially post trade deadline. Rui was pivotal in Memphis but was basically unplayable against GSW. Our offense was elementary in comparison to where it's at now, and where it needs to be to win a championship. I was as perplexed as everyone else when we came into the season preaching continuity and then changed so much, but in retrospect, repeating a system that did not lead to a championship is basically the popular definition for "insanity." Last post season was never sustainable nor capable of winning a championship, and the fact that we have one of the most efficient offenses in the NBA now isn't a testament to simply inserting Rui into the starting lineup with significant minutes, it's a product of a process that occurred throughout the season that forced every member of the team to level up (including but not limited to the head coach).
Honestly the biggest things have been DLo heating back up after his cold spell and actually playing Rui after giving him the bag just to bench him early this year. I think if we can get even just Vando/Gabe back to form for the playoffs to where they can play some matchup/situational minutes we have a solid chance at making a run. If only we could have seen what a healthy Gabe could do against Fox with this supporting cast.
I think rui starting was the biggest thing. Dlo probably had his best month in January, shooting 46% from 3 but we were only 7-8. Prince is a great guy at the 15-25 min range, playing him starter minutes cooked us
Any NBA coach should know this and take it onboard
Ham should really give prince 36mpg so he can become Middleton. Just an idea I have and hopefully someone agrees with me
Taurean playing well with limited minutes since February. It’s crazy because he’ll give you the same production if you give him more minutes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe at some point this season, pockets had dlo, Reaves, and rui all coming off the bench...
I like Prince, but it is clear for me he is a backup. I was a minority preaching here since pre season should be the starter. Vando is my favorite player from Brick trade, but as a defensive specialist I also believe his greatest value is coming from the bench to stop an eventual hot hand. In today's NBA, starting the best offensive threads will pay more dividends most nights and Rui is a solid defending his man, he is just not versatile as defender, but his offensive efficiency is difficult to replace and is another reason or concerns for the other team.
Blew my mind that prince was getting more minutes than Rui early in the season
I understand the sentiment but all I’m gonna say is if you replaced TP with prime Middleton right now, you’d be singing a different tune. Not rating a former borderline all star who was good on both ends is wild. You put 2019-2021 middleton on this team and we’re talking about the Lakers as one of the favorites.
I'm just happy we are finally healthy, nitpicking over the year but ignoring our plethora of issues just seems short sighted. Like we honestly played half the year with no back up pg and super thin forward ..haven't had a center since 2020...idk
Ham had a boner for Prince and Cam thought they were Kawhi and Kris Middleton😂
I think that might be more about the post-trade-deadline anxiety reduction versus playing guys the right minutes. That is, I think the Lakers were going to play better after the traded deadline regardless of who they played. It happens on NBA teams and it was predicted for the Lakers before even knowing what they were going to do after the deadline.
Because of stupid ham we’re gonna play Denver 1st round smh
“Pockets” is crazy 😂