The Lakers have an opportunity to close out the Grizzlies in game 5, can they get the job done on the road? We take a look at the challenge ahead of the Lakers and what’s at stake, plus issues with Anthony Davis’ offensive inconsistency, the rotation, D’Angelo Russell’s big moment and more….
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42 Comments
Concerns here, concerns there, always concerns, but this MFs keep winning games since the trade deadline. Lets be more optimistic here.
Mo Mamba !
I JUST DONT SEE WHY THE LAKERS WOULDNT BE ABLE TO CLOSE THIS OUT TONGIHT
Russ 3-18 shooting and their Season Ended by 6 pts Difference. You do the Math. That is Russ IN the Clutch
The officiating in the series has been atrocious and not consistent. Memphis has be clobbering the lakers under the basket and hasn’t been calling the fouls. Ja drives to the basket, they breathe on him and they call foul. It’s ridiculous!
Jeezus, cut AD some slack. He’s playing hurt. His hip is hurting but his playing through to give us all he has. Stop blaming him for being hurt and start PRAISING his game that he’s putting up through pain. And stop looking at FG attempts as indicators of how involved he is. Look at touches. I knew he was hurt when he would stand behind the 3 point line. When he’s on the block and the double comes quick and he gets it to the open guy shows he’s active. I’m tired of all this negativity. Listen losing sucks but it happens even if you’re playing well. Bottom line, give AD more love on this channel. It’s a disservice to the fans that you let that kind of slander fester here.
🐖= $0 👈 Give while you still can. 1 meaningful Donation.
My bracket looking good
I agree about Lonnie, and some of the other players too. Lonnie aint bad, hes a scorer and at times when the offense looks stagnant he couldnt hurt. Hes athletic and can penetrate the defense easily, I would love to see Lonnie go at Ja.
Darvin Ham will not be the LAL coach nxt season if he doesn't figure this out; starting him on the outside every possession is dumb! #smh #lakernation
Job finished?
I'm not buying the Lakers having heavier legs, than the Grizz. The excuse of the Lakers being an older team is over. Our oldest rotation player is LeBron, at 38. The next oldest is AD, at 30. The team, as a whole, is quite young. LeBron may need to pace himself. But, that just means more minutes for Rui, to give LeBron less burn. This will be more about focus, and determination, rather than stamina, for everyone other than LeBron.
D.Ham, seems like he'd be too stubborn to call a Coach he knows and ask for help on how to get AD the rock.
Lakers keys to winning game 5:
1- Get AD more involved in offense.
2- No more crazy 3's by players who can't make them. Only DLO and AR are good enough. No other player should be shooting more than 2-3 a game. (LeBron <19%)
3- Use TO's correctly.
4- Stop losing the 2nd. quarter in every game in the PO. Learn how to make quick adjustments.
5- Let AR and DLO bring the ball up the court instead of LeBron (too slow, too much energy wasted).
6- Bench Reaves and give his minutes to LW. Let Reaves go in the summer?
7- Let Darvin Ham watch videos of how competent NBA coaches call plays, make adjustments and call TO's the right way. G-League level coaching is not good enough for the NBA.
Why cant we match bamba with tillmans minutes? Hes not extremely more active than bamba.
Trev isn't your NBA Front office partner a Celtics fan.. .Amazing watching TNT last night those fellas gave the Clippers a pass if this were the Lakers OMG! PRIOR to the season all the "EXPERTS" picked the Lakers to finish in the playin bracket which they did.. but the Clippers were the sexy pick to reach the Finals they have PG & Kawhi, they have Lue, They have the owners deep pockets, they have this great depth..They got John wall for free.. when they made those trades oh the Clippers stole Gordon!
signed Russ oh he is the missing piece for them…yada yada yada..
when it fails to occur.. oh they like the little engine who couldn't get up the hill but tried oh so hard… What an amazing Job! The Media then stores the Clips away in the closet until training camp when this how great they are crap starts again!
It seems strange sometimes how we harp on all of the significant weaknesses the Lakers have shown all season and how frustrating it has been with all of their ups and downs. Here are a couple of tidbits to consider. Since the post-trade deadline, the Laker's combined record is 20-8. This includes the number of games James missed due to his foot injury and the first game, which was a loss to Chicago at home as most of the new troops were still in street clothes. Since Labron has returned and with the contribution of the new folks, including the Vandalorian, the Lakers are a combined 10-3!! That's a winning percentage of over eight hundred, and all at a time when the Lakers could not afford to take any games off, as they seemed to have been in must-win playoff-type mode forever. And in spite of all of that they are still 20-7 and 10-3 with Labron and Davis on the floor, which may partly explain why they already possess a chip in the first place. Somehow, we may be underestimating our good buddies in the purple and gold a bit too much.
Actually, they are 10-2 with Labron & Davis, for there was that game against Houston, where David was resting with the back end of a back-to-back.
Gonna say it again.. if ya wanna see the East Conf version of Ham watch the Bucks being coached by Budz..If not for KD's foot being on the line or Kyrie turning his ankle in game#4 Not sure Budz would still be there..Prior to that season everyone questioned his rotations, his in game strategy who were his top assistants Taylor Jenkins & Darvin Ham…The apple doesn't roll far from the tree folks..
will say this if Nick Nurse had stepped away last season as was expected he would have been the current Lakers coach with Ham being in Toronto.. Got a feeling Lue may leave the Clippers and Nurse will arrive..
But Credit to Ham for keeping them on the prize GUIDING THE SHIP out of the storm.
AD not going crazy is not the problem….if everyone else play great trust me Lakers will win the championship look at all Phill Jackson teams it's always the other players doing their job but coach can't have players in the game making a million turnovers and not making shots
Disagree with you 100%. Remember, they beat Toronto. If that much attention is put on AD. You can't do both my man.
AD is just soft. He’s a great player when he wants to be but that aggression needed to dominate every night just isn’t in him. Ham has to run the ball through him and be man enough to tell Lebron it runs through AD.
I hear a lot of complaining about Ham’s use of time outs, but Phil Jackson had a similar coaching style. Phil rarely called timeouts, especially during the regular season, preferring to allow the players to work things out for themselves.
As we all know closing out the series is the hardest one, hope we can do it tonight
Throwing out a trade suggestion to LAKERSNATION 🖤💜💛:
Dlo/2 1st rd/x player(s)=
Trea Young!
A friend of mine argument is that he scores at all three levels (so his game should age well), and he passes; which solves the issue of getting the ball to AD🖤💜💛LAbron would be your third option (and he could give the keys to a Trae/AD duo) on a Championship team #19💍🏆🖤💜💛
Preferably I don't want to see AD touch the ball NO less the 10 times. Offense must go through him and the perimeter players must be in motion, not standing around being spectators.
A.D put us on your back💪🏾Lakers N 🖐🏾
Health is the story this year. Clippers are already out because 2 stars were injured. Bucks might lose the series because of Giannis was injured. The Grizzlies are losing this series because their missing key players. The playoffs are fun to watch but when a star players goes down it takes away a lot of what could of been into an unfortunate circumstance. I truly believe the clippers could of beat the suns if they just had a healthy Kawhi Leonard.
I hope the lakers come out and make a strong start. Have one goal is to win this game at all cost. Lebron and AD need rest to before the next series. Since the kings and warriors might to go seven games, the extra days will be very helpful for the lakers.
So, the thing that I believe people aren't seeing is that the Lakers DO have the spring car to win when AD is playing like my 13 year old daughter. (Although I think she is stronger mentally) He won't lay an egg every game, but we have multiple means to win. Rui, Austin, D'lo, Schroeder, even Beas, has the ability to drop 30. They can't stop everyone. …..and the defense is lock down. They have a shot
Bron may look gassed to you Trev, but to me he's just picking his spots to exert his energy. A gassed Lebron doesn't play like that at the end of the game and overtime. So I'd just say he's an older Lebron where he can't go full tilt for the whole game like before but he can still fly. It's a mental/strategical game for him now whereas before it was more physical.
He does need help from a good supporting cast these days, as we all know so that's why the others really need to hold their own. I just wish he'd stop holding the ball and running time off the clock just to shoot long jumpers though – that doesn't make sense to me.
As long as we’re not losing than more than 10 points entering the 4th quarter, we should win this
Clippers gotta new clip😂
If the same AD shows up that had 7 blocks and the same King shows up that had 4 blocks, and the same Vanderbelt shows up that shut down Luka this year, we got this! Defense wins championships and this team’s defense is betta then our championship team that won the bubble!
Trevor Lane you our player of the year Bruddha Laker Nation 💜💛💜💛💯
All we have to do is get some big leads and mentally the grizzlies will self distruct, who knows, they might start fighting each other
That AD/alpha comment is so stupid it’s irritating. He’s been getting doubled/tripled every game while also being guarded by the DPOY and people are acting like it’s not happening. The Grizzlies are one of the best defensive teams in the league nobody goes off constantly against them
It's gonna be a kobe feel type of game where we would come in and you'd feel the life being sucked out of the opposing crowd as we made play after play. Kobe jumper after kobe jumper. This is what I see happening for us tonight. LAL 111 MEM 99
As someone who actually has to pay the staples prices, if he (AD) isn't going to be franchise, why pay him as one. Rui, Vando & Bamba minutes. Get some great pieces and allows rob to commit to young core.
Unfortunately for AD, he got Lebron's LePussy Mentality. 😁
Grizzlies gonna throw everything + the kitchen sink + all the eggs in a basket on this 1 game. If game 4 was the must win for us, game 5 is a must win for them so the intensity from the Lakers has to be at an all time high. If AD scores less than 20 points or has less than 10 at half time I am almost 100% certain we will lose this game. This has to be the game where every Laker available goes all out. Even IF the intensity results in a Laker injury that costs us the next round, fine. The goal right now has to be 1 thing: Beat the Grizzlies in game 5. None of us will be too disappointed if we do end up dropping out to the Kings or Warriors next round. Which I genuinely don't think will happen if everybody's healthy but either way… win tonight!
And tell Ham to STOP PLAYING MF BEASLEY. PUT IN LONNIE INSTEAD.
personally I know I dont want to live or die by ad's jumper. and neither do the lakers NOR ARE THEY…AD IS FINE WE DONT NEED HIM TO BE ANYVODY OTHER THAN WHO HE HAS BEEN LATELY
I DONT BUY THE WHOLE AD HAS TO BE THE BEST PLAYER ON THE COURT LMAO NOT EVEN CLOSE…