NBA discussion thread

Joey Crawford is a complete dipshit, a classic example of how the refs have become drunk on their own power. To throw Duncan out of such a huge game for laughing at a bad call is pathetic, you'd be hard pressed to find a classier NBA star than Duncan (and yes i know that is blasphemy coming from a Laker fan, but facts are facts).

The Lakers managed to finally secure a playoff berth, just getting by the Sonics after being up by 19 (no lead is safe with this Laker team). Kobe was unbelievable again (after a bad outing against the Suns), have you ever seen a player make scoring 50pts look so routine? I loved the fact that Smush got benched for Farmar, our defense was noticeably better and Farmar is great at moving the ball and finding the open man. I hope this line up is a glimpse at the future and Smush is permanently sent to the bench for the rest of the season, his negative attitude is not needed for the playoffs. I would even have Sasha take Smushs minutes at the PG, i had some unkind words for Sasha a few pages back but he played really well against Nash the other night and might be useful if we play them in the playoffs. Good to see Kwame and Vlad back as well, they may still be injured but we need as many live bodies as we can get at this stage.

Agreed man it is about time we got this dude out of our starting lineup after 162 consecutive starts. Leave him out and don't even think about putting him back in Phil. We have held our last two opponents under 100 for a reason, because Smush had limited playing time.

Originally posted by koolruningz
Joey Crawford is a complete dipshit, a classic example of how the refs have become drunk on their own power. To throw Duncan out of such a huge game for laughing at a bad call is pathetic, you'd be hard pressed to find a classier NBA star than Duncan (and yes i know that is blasphemy coming from a Laker fan, but facts are facts).

Did you hear what Crawford said to Duncan. He asked Duncan if he wanted to fight. That sh!t is unbeleivable, and I gurantee you he's not going to get fined or suspended, now if Duncan or any other player called out an official to a fight they would get suspended for God knows how long.

Tim Duncan, the quiet man, gets ejected? The ref needs to losen up, he was laughing, and said he got fouled, big fricken whoop.

I'm just glad that the Lakers made it to the playoffs. I highly doubt that they'll get out of the first round though. Their defense is non existant and they seem to lose large leads easily. Kobe is great, but no one is good enough to carry a team like this alone. An inexperienced team plagued with injury. That's a recipe for failure in the playoffs. No matter what, though, I'll always be cheering for this team.

Not make it out of the first round? Yeah win our next game and we are playing the Suns and I haven't met a single Lakers fan that don't think we aren't going to eliminate them bitches. We are in the second round fa sure.

Originally posted by wuTa
Did you hear what Crawford said to Duncan. He asked Duncan if he wanted to fight. That sh!t is unbeleivable, and I gurantee you he's not going to get fined or suspended, now if Duncan or any other player called out an official to a fight they would get suspended for God knows how long.

The NBA refs are a joke, Crawford has been one of the worst for years. He's got a total god complex and this just proves it even further.

Originally posted by teampac08
I'm just glad that the Lakers made it to the playoffs. I highly doubt that they'll get out of the first round though. Their defense is non existant and they seem to lose large leads easily. Kobe is great, but no one is good enough to carry a team like this alone. An inexperienced team plagued with injury. That's a recipe for failure in the playoffs. No matter what, though, I'll always be cheering for this team.

Totally agree man, the Lakers have been my team for over 20yrs now and always will be. But its painful to watch them play defense at the moment. I wonder what great Laker defenders like Michael Cooper and Rick Fox think when they see players like Smush play defense like its an afterthought. Kobe will always give the team a chance to win any game in the playoffs but i dont think thats enough to win a series. Lamar, Kwame and Luke probably wouldnt be playing (because of injuries) if we didnt make the post season, that coupled with our inexperience and lack of intensity is a recipe for a short playoff run.

As long as we play the Suns the first round we will be fine, and I'll put money on that right now. I am glad Phil decided to not start Smush and you see it helped us out on the defensive side, as long as Farmar starts we can make a playoff run but we have to avoid the Mavs at all cost! If we beat the Suns, avoid the Mavs and play the Spurs, we could possibly be finals bound. I need to see the bracket when the seasons over but hopefully we have a favorable route and hopefully someone can upset the Mavs then we have more than a chance.

Originally posted by Lord Evolution
As long as we play the Suns the first round we will be fine, and I'll put money on that right now. I am glad Phil decided to not start Smush and you see it helped us out on the defensive side, as long as Farmar starts we can make a playoff run but we have to avoid the Mavs at all cost! If we beat the Suns, avoid the Mavs and play the Spurs, we could possibly be finals bound. I need to see the bracket when the seasons over but hopefully we have a favorable route and hopefully someone can upset the Mavs then we have more than a chance.

I'm sure Lakers fans love your optimism, but anyone that is not a Laker fan is lauging at this.

And noone is going to bet you on a message board, besides, how did that Miami not make the playoffs work out?

Lakers out first round in 6 games = my prediction.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2840587

What yall know about that....

Originally posted by Lord Evolution
Not make it out of the first round? Yeah win our next game and we are playing the Suns and I haven't met a single Lakers fan that don't think we aren't going to eliminate them bitches. We are in the second round fa sure.

I want to play the Suns as well. We have great confidence as a team against them and I bet you that every Laker personally wants their revenge due to last year's unfortunate playoff run. However, we are a banged up team that is still very inexperienced. We have terrible defense and that is something that will truly hurt us when going up against the league's best offense. They are a deeper team than us, and while I give our team a shot I still think Suns have the majority against us. Never underestimate Kobe and Phil working together, and I'm pretty sure the Suns know that by now.

We aren't as banged up as you make us out to be. Maybe a few weeks ago yeah but not anymore. Vlad is back, Kwame is back and I guess the only person we are missing is Mihm, we are as healthy as we were at the beginning of the season. When we were beating pretty much all the top teams and had a good record.

Originally posted by Lord Evolution
As long as we play the Suns the first round we will be fine, and I'll put money on that right now. I am glad Phil decided to not start Smush and you see it helped us out on the defensive side, as long as Farmar starts we can make a playoff run but we have to avoid the Mavs at all cost! If we beat the Suns, avoid the Mavs and play the Spurs, we could possibly be finals bound. I need to see the bracket when the seasons over but hopefully we have a favorable route and hopefully someone can upset the Mavs then we have more than a chance.

You're joking....right? 😕

Originally posted by Lord Evolution
We aren't as banged up as you make us out to be. Maybe a few weeks ago yeah but not anymore. Vlad is back, Kwame is back and I guess the only person we are missing is Mihm, we are as healthy as we were at the beginning of the season. When we were beating pretty much all the top teams and had a good record.

Just because they're playing doesnt mean that they're fully healed. Odom is playing through a torn labrum and will most likely have fix it in the offseason. Anyway, point is this team has a shot to beat the Suns but everyone knows that the majority goes to the Suns. Even Laker fans know this deep down in their hearts.

It's the Suns, we are not talking Mavericks here. Every Lakers fan except you and maybe kool that I know thinks we'll beat them. There is no "deep down in our hearts", we know we can beat them. Thinking otherwise is just not having faith or not being a fan. They'll run out of gas like they have for the past 2 years. People thought the same when we were up against them in last years playoffs but we took them to 7. But I really don't feel like arguing with someone over this because it is a matter of opinion but thinking we are going to lose is the mentality of an underachiever or loser if you are a Lakers fan.

There's a difference between being a fan and saying, "We'll beat 'em bad," and objectively thinking that you have realistic chances of beating them. I say that the Nets can beat anyone when I'm in "fan" mode, but do I really think that they can, especially in a 7 game series? And does that make me a bad fan when I admit the other team's the better team and will win?

We all feel that the Lakers have a chance to beat the Suns, but teampac's just making the prediction that they won't.

Does that make you a bad fan? Hell yes it does.....Go inside a bar full of die hard Nets fans and start spouting out that you think they are going to lose, see what their reception is, probably going to be something similar to mine. That shit would be annoying and definitely unwanted, just like it is right now.

"I'm a Lakers fun but I think we are going lose, we have no chance". Smells like a loser to me.

A fan is someone who supports the team no matter what, there are just some fans who are more realistic than others. I have said before we can beat the Suns but i dont think we will, there is a reason they have odds for people who like to bet. Just because i think the Suns will be too good for us does not mean i wont be cheering for the Lakers, im just being honest and i think teampac is doing the same.
The fact of the matter is we have half the team banged up (Lamar, Luke, Kwame, Evans, Vlad, Cook and Turiaf) and we have been on a terrible run lately and have only beaten a +500 team once in the last 2 and a half months. Thats why i dont think we will get past the Suns this year, its got nothing to do with me giving up on my team. I understand the playoffs are a clean slate but our defense has to improve dramatically to stand a chance against the Suns onslaught.
If we can make Nash a scorer instead of a playmaker (which means we have to stay home on all shooters) then we are in good shape. To do this Smush needs to stay on the bench, Famar and Sasha (and maybe Williams) are the only players who have been up to the task of staying in front of Nash. The second thing we need to do on defense is to stop switching on pick and rolls, just show hard and get back to the screener (sounds easy but we havent been able to defend that play all year and the Suns run it well all the time). Last on defense, get back in transition! No more jogging up the court while Nash pitches ahead to Marion or Barbossa or whoever, if you cant get the offensive board turn and sprint back on D.
Offensively we need to play to our strengths, that means posting up either Kobe, Lamar, Luke, Kwame or Bynum every time down. This does two things, it slows the game down to our tempo and draws double teams. This is contingent on our guys other than Kobe and Luke learning how to feed the post properly, if you cant make a post entry pass - get on the other side of the floor and leave it to someone who can. Once the ball is in the post no more passing out for bricked 3 pointers, this fuels the Suns running game and causes us to play their game. Instead have players like Turiaf and Evans make dive cuts to the front of the rim for higher percentage shots, that also gives us a better chance at offensive rebounds.
Now all of those things seems easy but the Lakers havent played very smart all year and take way too many threes for a team with terrible shooters. If we can stick to the gameplan anything is possible but we have to be disciplined and play to our strengths.

What you call realistic(saying we are going to lose the series), I call not having faith. The problems we are having this year is similar to last year. You can't just go into the playoffs every year thinking the best team during the regular season is going to win and ignoring match-ups. What I see when we play the Suns is exactly what I seen in last years series. We may have played bad in half of our games but we play the Suns exactly how we are supposed to. The reason why we lost these past few against them is because the game was turned in the 4TH quarter with huge 3's from Raja Bell or someone else, usually Bell. I will admit we aren't going to blow this team out a single game in the series if we play, but what we will do is play evenly throughout the game like we have been doing. We have to focus on doing what we have been doing against this team but don't give it up in the 4th quarter. But like I said before, the gas will eventually run out like the past couple years and like Steve Nash admitted to in the 06 playoffs, "we are tired". They made 17 3's the last two times we have played, and in one game they made 10, do you really think they will be able to do this in the playoffs? Amare Stoudemire doesn't really do as good against as he does against everyone else. 19 points and 15 points the last two times we played, he isn;t our problem but that doesn't stop people from thinking he will be the difference maker when we have kept him under wraps.

All about match-ups and not regular season records.