<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Now that the Lakers have some free time on their hands, they ought to spend tonight watching the Golden State Warriors vs. the Dallas Mavericks. They can add what they learn to the lessons the Phoenix Suns gave them during this brief five-game series. It's time for Phil Jackson and the Lakers to adopt a change in philosophy ? and I'm not talking about Zen vs. existentialism. I'm talking about small vs. big, random shapes vs. the triangle. The Lakers have tried to win now with Kwame Brown, staked their future to Andrew Bynum, while their fans have held out hope for Kevin Garnett. Big men are exceptionally hard to come by, especially when you don't have salary cap room and have limited trade material. So if the personnel options are limited, why not rethink the approach? This is two consecutive years the Lakers couldn't beat the Suns in the first round, so why not join them? Or even try to mimic Golden State, which has already produced two more victories than the Lakers this postseason. The trend is toward small. The Lakers tried to go against the current but wound up adrift. They traded Caron Butler ? whose game meshed with Kobe Bryant's better than anyone else's on the roster ? for Brown. Butler became an All-Star, Brown is becoming Olowokandian in his level of top-pick disappointment. It's a lot easier to find a Matt Barnes or a Boris Diaw, players tossed aside or included as throw-ins, than to land one of the elusive big men. Besides, how many playoff series has Yao Ming won? (Answer: zero.) Whatever it is, an increasingly agitated Bryant has an order: "Do something and do it now." Later, he said: "I'd like to see them make some strides this off-coming season. Make some strides to try to bring some players here that can get us to being a contender." The thing that separates these upstart teams is attitude even more than physical attributes. "You've got to have a group of guys that's willing to run and share the ball," Suns center Amare Stoudemire said earlier in the series. "Without sharing the ball, it's not going to work. You've got to have a core team and a solid team that really understands how important it is to share the ball. "If you've got a dominant scorer, it's tough for him to not be a dominant scorer. Having a fast break style of play, you've got to get yours within the offense." Phoenix and Golden State were the two highest scoring teams in the NBA this season, yet neither had an individual player among the league's top 20 scorers. Bryant has shown he can score better than anyone in the league for the past two seasons, and score at a rate that ranks with the game's all-time greats. But he hasn't shown that it can lead to winning playoff series. The Lakers' only victory in this series came when he made an effort to set up his teammates for shots in Game 3, rather than throw them the ball in desperation after getting caught in a double-team. Bryant, more than any player in the league, can do anything he wants on the court. It's just a question of what he wants to do, whether he'll mold his game to be a part of something different. "I'll do whatever it takes to win," Bryant said. "I've had to do a lot just to get us into the playoffs. I don't want to do that. I want to win championships. I don't want to be a one-man show, a team that goes onto the road, the opposition crowd wants to see me score 50 and lose. "I'm not with that. I'm about winning. I want to win championships and win them now. So, they have some decisions to make."</div> Source: LATimes I'm not too, keen on this idea. I've yet to see a small-ball team win an NBA title. If you look at the teams winning titles they all had one common factor, defense. The Spurs, Pistons, Heat, even the Laker championship teams could all play defense and lock a team down in the post season. Being able to dictate tempo, rebound, disrupt rhythm, and force a running team into executing in the halfcourt is the formula for winning a title. Changes in the league have made it more "guard-friendly," but until a team like Phoenix or Golden State make it to the Finals and win a title, the blueprint should still be built around a strong defense.
I don't think that would fit into Phil Jacksons coaching book, but i really cant see a Laker team playing like Golden State or Phonix. It is so uncharacterestic of them.
Nope. We don't have the pieces to play small ball, nor do I think we could acquire the pieces. This team plays a good style of basketball, they just need the right players.
