I have never been so glad that my recaps for Lakers Nation are from the perspective of a fan… I do not have to be impartial, and I do not have to rehash every part of the game.
This is the short way of saying never fear fellow Lakers fans, I am not going to make you relive yesterday’s debacle. Of course I like to be as thorough as possible and try my best to make my recaps knowledgeable and entertaining, but there is no way
I could talk about yesterday’s game and make other Lakers fans want to read it. I know I wouldn’t want to!
After most losses, I avoid internet and TV coverage because it’s hard to hear difficult things being said about your team, and who wants to re-watch failure anyway? It’s made even worse when the Lakers lose to a longtime foe or someone that I happen to have a vendetta against- while the two are not mutually exclusive, it often ends up being the same team, such as the Celtics.
There were a few positives that I took away from the game at least. I did enjoy the first half; our defense wasn’t great, but the game was exciting. I liked the throwback jerseys too. Lamar had a good offensive game overall, though I would have liked more rebounds.
Andrew Bynum was also effective but got into some bad foul trouble that curtailed his aggressiveness on the defensive end of the floor. And even though Kobe took a good amount of shots, he did shoot around 50% from the floor and notched 41 points during a game where most of his teammates struggled.
Granted, he had zero assists which always leads me to contemplate a chicken-or-the-egg type of scenario. Did his teammates struggle because he wasn’t being a facilitator? Or did he shift into aggressive scoring mode because his teammates were struggling?
I believe it was the latter in yesterday’s case. Pau couldn’t get anything done, nor could Derek or Ron. It’s difficult to get assists when no one can make a basket. And absolutely no one played any defense.