5 Things: Birthday BlueAll I wanted for my birthday , the only thing I asked for, was a Lakers win. That went ‘poor’ roughly 5 minutes into the 1st quarter as the Lakers no-showed the first of their 5 game road trip.
1) Can’t blame travel. The Lakers arrived in Atlanta the day before the game. So, while I’m sure they weren’t fully acclimated to the time, it’s not like the game in Portland where they arrived in the dead of night.
2) No defense. Not sure what the coaches laid out in terms of stopping Atlanta but it didn’t work and wasn’t well-executed. Atlanta hot what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted. There was not much positive to illustrate on the defensive end.
3) The other side of the Nick Smith Jr. coin. I’m always rooting for two-ways and young players in general. It takes a lot just to stick in the NBA. We saw the best version of Nick in Portland and, what I hope, the worst version in Atlanta. The problem I had with Nick’s game last night was two-fold: indecision and then a loss of aggression due to not hitting shots. Strategically m, his herky-jerky quickness is his greatest strength. Why then lay back after setting a screen and you get the ball while the defense resets? Time after time in the first half Smith got the rock and stopped. Waiting…thinking…and the hole that had been for a split second closed and he chose to then attack a set defense with multiple players between him and an easy scoring chance. Nick needs to speed up his decision making process if he wants to find a consistent role in the NBA.
4) Bronny, Vando and Knecht played pretty well. It would have been nice to see those 3 alongside Luka and Ayton, maybe Hayes to match speed and length with speed and length in the 4th to see if we could have made it game but the coach folded in the 3rd and got pouty. Which is too bad because that trio played hard and deserved as much of a shot to try and pull out a win as any other line up we could put out there.
5) Redick’s regression. If you watched his post game news conference Redick looked, sounded and acted like a kid pissy about his bed time. This is, by far, my biggest issue with our coach (besides no discernible offensive schemes other than give a good player the ball and hope, much like his predecessor Coach Darvin Ham). As an NBA coach your role has changed into general organization of team concepts, inspirational leader and bridge to improvement. Gone are the voluminous playbook days and most teams just run the same basic idea of a play over and over and over. The teams that don’t now generally feel the wrath and petulance of a star player (ask Memphis). But what you have to do, unless you have earned the right to do behave otherwise, I’d keep your cool. Just like he’d ask his players to do. Throwing in the towel in the 3rd quarter when you’re down 20 is not an acceptable answer to any NBA-sized problem. It just shows how not ready you are to handle pressure. Follow that up with a terse, bratty post game interview and it just confirms that view. This is not about the regular season, this is about the playoffs. We’ve seen similar extreme swings from Coach in the playoffs when he played one lineup 24 straight minutes (lost that one, too) and my hope is that LeBron or another person in the organization can get him to understand just how counter-productive this kind of behavior is to his goal. You’re not going to embarrass your team into playing better, not at this level. This is how you lose a super star player or, worse, a team. When I talk about variance, this is my big problem with JJ. He has coaching swings like a two-way player and it never is a good look for him, the team or the record. Just own up to not having the team ready, flush it and move in. Acting like a spoiled brat gets you nowhere.
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