Ugh, Lakers are falling apart right now. It'd be nice if more than Pau and Kobe showed up tonight. Odom, where the hell are you?
Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but Pau has continued his trend of following a decent game with a very good game. He's got 24 tonight after only 12 (or was it 13?) yesterday. Hopefully he can find some consistency with his scoring soon though.
You know, I'm just wondering how this game is even as close as it is? The Bobcats have basically played 7 people tonight (Boykins has only played 9min, so not counting him) and they're playing without Gerald Wallace. They've also shot half the FTs the Lakers have, only have 2 more rebounds, and have more TOs. Not to mention their leading scorer is only 4/14 tonight with 10 points. It's games like this that make you wonder about the Lakers some time. These are the types of games we should be winning by 15+, not letting the opponent hang around til the final minute of the game.
I'm not saying I dislike the margin, I just don't like the fact that we let them hang around so much. I mean, they were playing without Gerald Wallace, JRich had a horrible game, Okafor had a bad game offensively, they turned the ball over a lot and only played with basically a seven man rotation. I'll give the Lakers a break since it was the 8th game in a 9 game road trip and the 2nd game of a back to back, but we need to able to put teams like this away a lot sooner than we did tonight.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Moo2K4 @ Feb 11 2008, 09:40 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I'm not saying I dislike the margin, I just don't like the fact that we let them hang around so much. I mean, they were playing without Gerald Wallace, JRich had a horrible game, Okafor had a bad game offensively, they turned the ball over a lot and only played with basically a seven man rotation. I'll give the Lakers a break since it was the 8th game in a 9 game road trip and the 2nd game of a back to back, but we need to able to put teams like this away a lot sooner than we did tonight.</div> Well, Odom was not aggressive enough again, and Fisher was missing open shots all night. So two of our starters that we have to rely on while Bynum is out failed us to an extent.
Lakers are now 6-2 on this road trip after the win! I would have been happy with a 5-4 trip, but this has exceeded my expectations and the team is now 4-1 since the Gasol trade! The Bobcats made a strong push in the 4th quarter, but made several mistakes to cost them a comeback victory. The Lakers have been mentally tough these past 3 games making plays and pulling out close victories. I know the Bobcats aren't a very good team, but they've had success against us for some reason and the Lakers can always expect opposing teams to play their 'A' game against us. I was concerned with how Nazr Mohammed was beating us up in the paint, but I guess the team was focused on shutting down Okafor and living with Nazr trying to beat them. Kobe and Gasol look like they've been playing together for at 5 years with the way they play off one another. The pick and roll they run is almost impossible to stop. I thought Radman played an inspired defensive game challenging JRich and rotating hard out on the Bobcat shooters. The 3 pointer Farmar made to push the lead back to 6 was the shot of night. That just took all the momentum away from Charlotte and they never got any closer after that. Odom showed up when it counted most, but he really coasted for the first 3 quarters with foul trouble and not much aggression like Huevon mentioned. He was probably fatigued after the monster game he had last night.
