G01 [email protected] Game Thread + Chat

Game Thread 798

Brent’s POST GAME take

  • Lin did good overall in this game. Looked really bad in the 1st 6 minutes. Finally the team started to click during Lin’s second stint. But he was finding balances on the fly. The 2 drives were very tactical, it just did not work in his favor.
  • Kobe asserted himself too much, he has to let his young teammates grow IMO. Just play like a dummy SG for a few game won’t hurt, will it?
  • The whole offensive system was broken in general. Too many moves that were without the purposes. HOU actually came prepared defensively.
  • I personally do not agree the point of “for Lin to shine, he has to go to bench with Davis”. He has to find a way to work with others, especially Kobe, boozer and Hill. There is no reason to avoid doing this. Seeking instant result will only hurt this team in the long run.
  • The insertion of Henry and the longer minutes he played. I would only assume that Scott had a bigger picture and he wanted to get his personnels ready 1st.
  • 2nd unit without Lin completely collapsed. While I disagree with the idea of Lin as a bench, I do think the rotation should be designed in a way that he can lead the 2nd unit for a longer time.

Now the hype for the 1st game is over. Lin and the Co. need to focus on what they can do to improve, e.g.

  1. a better rotation pattern,
  2. cohesion,
  3. hold players accountable for their mistakes. (Price made 3 mistakes in a row, even Dave Miller was not singing his praises.)
  4. tweak lose ends one by one.
  5. starts with simple things offensively. Princeton and triangle have a steeper learning curve in general.
  6. ……….

LAL is not as weak as it seems, but it is still weak in general. Lin and yound players are this teams’ future, hence hopefully we can see improvements game by game.

All in all I will give Lin a B-…..

realdsb’s game review:

  • Lin did not do much the first half. Only attempted to drive a few times. This was mostly attributed to the Rockets containing Lin on the pick and rolls. Every time, they trapped Lin on the PNR so that he could not drive, nor could he pass to the screener. The Lakers will have to figure out how to counter that defense.
  • As I expected, even when Lin got past Beverley, he did not have open looks at the rim due to Howard. But whenever Howard sat, Lin was able to do his usual thing of driving to the rim and at least picking up the foul.
  • In Q3, with Howard mostly sitting due to foul trouble, Lin was able to get his game going and making plays all over the place: attacking frequently, and-1, dishing off the penetration, pushing the tempo in transition. Got the Lakers within single digits, but it was too late.
  • Lin’s passing/ballhandling was not good. He had 4 turnovers, I think all either from bad passes or lost the ball. Well, at least he didn’t get the ball stolen directly, Beverley had 0 steals.
  • Defensively, Lin did a good job guarding Beverley, didn’t allow him to do much. Contrast that to when Clarkson came in, Beverley immediately destroyed him with a crossover as if he were Kyrie.

 

Grade: C. Lakers have a lot of team gelling to work on. Lin may need to do more solo offense like Kobe. He only took 1 jumper. As “bad” as Lin’s game was, Price’s was even worse.

Houston: their defense was impressive, even Harden held his own when matched up against Kobe or Lin. We’ll see if it’s as good against better teams, or only looked good because it was against the Lakers.

 

Finally, the moment Lin fans have been waiting for is here.
The game will start in less than 4 hours.

Vote your best guess on Lin’s performance tonight!

Members Only since there are troll answers
[yop_poll id=”16″]

  1. How would Jeremy Lin perform in the 1st game against his old team that famously had no need for his services by promoting his jersey on Melo billboard in a failed attempt to woo Melo?
  2. How will Jeremy play against Bev? What will he do if he dribble-penetrate only to be met by Dwight Howard? Will he pass to Ed Davis for a dunk? Or will he use his floater that we have not seen in preseason yet?
  3. How will Jeremy play with Kobe as a secondary playmaker? Can he stay aggressive playing off-the-ball more?
  4. And will Lakers transition defense hold up against the barrange of 3 pt-ers? Most importantly, how will Lakers big men stop Dwight and Harden so they won’t get so many Free Throws?

Whatever it may be, we know Lin will be ready to face his old team based on his successful track record (5-0) against his old team NY Knicks during his 3 years in Houston.

What will you do to celebrate if Lin performs well? And what will you do if Lin and the Lakers manage the unlikely scenario to topple Public Enemy #1 in LA tonight , Houston Rockets?

 

How to Use Chat and Disqus Comments

1. For game comments, upvotes and record-keeping of Lin’s or Lakers’ stats, use Disqus
2. For cheering and saying Hello, use Chat Box for fun interaction (i.e. say hello, cheer, scream “Lin for 3!!!!”)

If you use laptop, you should see it side-by-side. If not, please choose either Disqus or Chat.

GameThreadChat_SIDEBySIDE

Streams:

GAME CHAT on SIDEBAR

For pop-out window, please click on the Triangle button on top-right window. It will undock it for better usage experience. You would need to login as a member using Top Menu to join the chat. Do not use Chat Login window asking you to enter email address.

Note: If you have a long post or the Chat performance is too LAGGING, please use Disqus comments instead

By psalm234