GT: Los Angeles Lakers @ Sacramento Kings - Continue the Tradition

The Lakers came out flat, played retarted basketball, and made the same mistakes on defense the entire game. I think it's a classic case of looking ahead to their upcoming game against the Suns tomorrow night. The Lakers blew the Kings out in the first meeting and they probably felt if they just showed up they'd be able to come away with a win.

What I couldn't understand was the scrambling defense and unnecessary double teams the Lakers were doing on the defensive end. NO ONE on the Kings should command a double team, yet everytime a player had the ball in the high post the Lakers kept cheating over and it lead to easy baskets or wide open 3 point looks.

The Kings really got it going by pushing the pace early on and getting easy transition buckets. Their confidence took off from there, while the Lakers played frustrated basketball and got out of rhythm complaing with the refs and committing stupid fouls.

Kobe Bryant had a horrible shooting night forcing most of his shots and not playing within the offense. He was trying to score everytime Salmons was scoring on the other end, but the Kings were packing the paint against Kobe and sending two defenders to force him to pass out of the double teams. The few times he passed out it led to high percentage shots, but Kobe was taking off balanced jumpers against 2 or 3 guys in his face.

The Lakers need to bring the Kings back to earth this Friday at Staples.

Lakers have a lot of work to do on the defensive end and they need to do a better job of recognizing what a team is trying to do agains them and then shut that down. The points the team is allowing in the 4th quarter the last 5 games is alarming.

Tonight - 26 points
vs. Milwaukee - 38 points
vs. Washington -32 points
vs. Philly - 33 points
vs. Indiana - 32 points

Giving up 30 points in the 4th quarter isn't Championship caliber basketball and the worst part is all these teams are under .500.

 

We need a lot of fucking help. Phil can't coach defense, it's disgusting. We can't execute defense, either. Terrible game from Kobe. Why the hell aren't we running our offense through the post the entire game? Gasol has been our most consistent player all year; yet when the game is on the line, the ball stays on the perimeter. And fucking Phil...sitting Bynum most of the 4th, again. Fucking god awful.

 

I don't think our players know how to rotate properly. They are average when it comes to the 2nd rotation, but you rarely see a guy picking up the 3rd or 4th rotations on defense you have to make during a possession. It also doesn't help when our perimeter defenders are funneling the ball handler to the baseline, but the baseline help isn't there to trap the guy behind the hoop or force him into a difficult shot. I've seen guys get wide open layups consistently on our defense because our big men aren't in the proper position. I'm not sure if it's a communication problem or these guys just don't practice defense on their days off.

We should do all we can to hire JVG to come up with some defensive schemes.

 

Contract Year happened to him.

 

I hope so too. Towards the end of last year, I really grew to like Sasha. However, I was worried that he was extra focused last year because of his contract situation and so far my worries have been right. I have full confidence in him turning it around because he is a gym rat, but he needs to do it soon before he starts to lose even more PT.