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There will be no trade demand needed for Gasol. The Lakers will dump him on the first team that is dumb enough to take him. I'm sure they are calling the Knicks right now. Just like they tried to trade Gasol during the year.
I do not know why you are defending Gasol so much. He has done nothing this series. No rebounding, no defense, nothing. Just stands just out side the line and occasionally goes to set a ball screen and then go back immediately to where he was for the rest of the possession.
Interesting you seem to think Gasol is just wandering about the court randomly like it's some sort of pickup game? That's the coach's play design right there. A number of articles on-line discuss how the coach has changed Gasols role.
The buck stops with Kobe. He is the teams leader and star, he get's all the credit.....but some of you don't dare want to face reality that he's directly the cause of 2 of the losses to OKC so far.
I'm less defending gasol than I'm pointing out that people are blaming the wrong guy. I mean, even if gasol isn't getting it done you have to be blind not to see that Kobe has brought his "D" game to this series.
P.S. In the finals last year Lebron didn't play well but Bosh played even worse. You guys are essentially blaming Bosh for last years finals loss.
I really think Pau doesn't fit into the Laker's offensive system anymore since Bynum's emergence. Bynum has clogged up the lane with his post moves, etc. Btw, if Pau didn't have a big game 7 against the Nuggets, the Lakers might have been sitting at home instead of playing OKC right now... also, how soon people forget about Pau helping the Lakers to two titles.
I think people are over-analyzing specific players a bit much. It's not the problem of any one player; it's a team failure.
Regarding the last game, I think the main problem was that the team just simply did not close out. Kobe wants to blame Pau, but he was hustling on defense as much as anyone. He made one bad pass, and yeah, he might not have been as aggressive as he could have been, but at the same time, if he gets too aggressive, perhaps he gets stuffed and turns the ball over. The real problem was that the Lakers started taking bad shots. Metta World Peace took a couple of shots that were not well-advised from the perimeter. I believe Sessions kept missing shots on drives. Pau missed some, and Kobe missed a few as well. The Lakers simply took their foot off the gas. I could even sense that was going to happen with about 8 minutes left to play. The pace of play had changed, and you could just feel that the Thunder were going to make one more run, and they did just that.
And I am not going to pin all of the blame on Mike Brown, either. The Lakers have always been talented, but with all of their complex characters and egos, they've also been a very complicated and challenging team to run. For all of Phil Jackson's accolades and accomplishments, I am beginning to think that he probably would have coached another year or two, if he had felt like it might work, but I suspect that he saw this train wreck coming, and he may have realized that there was nothing he could due about it. And if Jackson couldn't run that team, then nobody could.
I think the Lakers just need a fresh start, but maybe it's hard for someone like Mitch Kupchack, who has a core group of players who he sees as being competitive, to pull the trigger and rebuild. But barring a massive trade that would include some of the game's biggest stars, I don't see Kobe tying MJ with his sixth ring - at least not with the Lakers. I could see an aging Kobe being added to a roster of younger super stars and winning a ring, but he's going to start losing his status as the team's unquestioned leader within the next two to three years.
Interesting you seem to think Gasol is just wandering about the court randomly like it's some sort of pickup game? That's the coach's play design right there. A number of articles on-line discuss how the coach has changed Gasols role.
The buck stops with Kobe. He is the teams leader and star, he get's all the credit.....but some of you don't dare want to face reality that he's directly the cause of 2 of the losses to OKC so far.
I'm less defending gasol than I'm pointing out that people are blaming the wrong guy. I mean, even if gasol isn't getting it done you have to be blind not to see that Kobe has brought his "D" game to this series.
P.S. In the finals last year Lebron didn't play well but Bosh played even worse. You guys are essentially blaming Bosh for last years finals loss.
Dude, it's a team game.
Assigning most of the blame on Kobe is stupid.
Kobe is no more to blame than Gasol or Bynum.
I do agree that Kobe deserves some of the blame but you are really over doing it with the overly-critical analysis of Kobe.
Had the Lakers won the championship with Kobe shooting 38 percent and shooting the ball 30 times a game, you wouldn't still be blaming Kobe.
Regardless, OKC should finish off the Lakers tonight in Game 5. Hit them where they hurt most, bleed them every which way. If Kobe wants to keep blaming his teammates, let him. Bynum is welcome to cheap-shot Derek Fisher (shortest guy on OKC) the way he did with J. J. Barea. (Can't do that to Westbrook 'cos Westbrook's too fast for him.) Artest can dish out more elbows and clotheslines, 'cos that's one thing he does better than basketball. Bring out more of the worst in those evildoers. Make them relive the humiliation and total revulsion of last post-season's Game 4 with Mavericks.
Here's a public service message just for the Lakers for tonight's game.
Last edited by phoenix_talons; 05-21-2012 at 06:04 PM..
Kobe said something to the effect of "I missed some shots but pau needs to be aggressive" in other words, Kobe was being a 9 yr old kid admitting he was wrong then immediately attempting or redirecting blame away from himself to make the negative focus be on others and not himself. That's classic 9yr old stuff. "yeah I did spill it mom BUT did you see what Timmy did?????!!!!!!"
I wish every crowd in the NBA was like the OKC crowd.
I think the crowd is like that because they never had a NBA team to root for so it's a exciting time for the people in OKC. You don't the energy from the crowd like that in other stadiums just at OKC.
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