Wolverine
Star Player
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
Posts: 7846
Location: San Jose, CA
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 Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 3:42 pm Post subject: The Ringer: The Lakers Love Basketball |
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Good analysis of the Laker season thus far.
| Quote: | The Lakers Love Basketball
John Gonzalez
Storyteller. Mercenary.
15 min. read
A month with Luke Walton and the youthful, fast-paced, fun-as-hell Lakers, who are getting along, winning games, and waking up after the Kobe era.
Much of what you need to know about the Lakers — these Lakers, now mercifully absent Kobe’s interminable farewell tour and free of Byron Scott’s suffocating chokehold — unfolded a few nights before Thanksgiving at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Oklahoma City was in town, which is to say Russell Westbrook was in town, which is to say Russell Westbrook was cooking. He flambéed the Lakers defenders and barbecued the box score, to the tune of 34 points, eight boards, and 13 assists, putting the Thunder in position to escape with a tight road win.
With the Lakers down one with seconds remaining, L.A. rookie swingman Brandon Ingram tried to push into the paint, only to have Thunder defenders wall it off. Ingram turned and passed to guard Lou Williams, who was stationed behind the arc. Except, no, that’s not quite right. Ingram passed toward Williams, an important distinction. The ball was intercepted, stolen by an unwitting thief: guard Nick Young.
In what future swag scholars will inarguably hail as the most Swaggy P play that Swaggy P ever gifted us, Young — who was lost and looking for space — wandered across the passing lane at the exact wrong time, snatched the ball out of the air, took somewhere between four and all the steps, and jacked up an impossible off-balance 3. Which went in. (If I can watch only one NBA play ever again, make it that one, and give it to me A Clockwork Orange–style.) The crowd went nuts and the Lakers went nuts and, just to widen smiles from Compton to Calabasas, Young commemorated the event by co-opting D’Angelo Russell’s proprietary “ice in my veins” celebration. Russell, who was on the bench with knee soreness, absolutely loved it.
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Luke Walton will hate this part. It can’t be helped. He does not want this story to be about him. He expressed as much through team intermediaries. He would prefer it be about the players. That’s understandable and expected (if cribbed from the humility chapter in the coaching manual). And it is about his players. Very much so. But it is also about him somehow putting the broken Lakers program back together, after it fell a great distance over the last few seasons. Walton won’t like it, but you have to admire the man’s trauma surgery skills.
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After Russell scored a game-high 32 points, including seven 3s, in a mid-November win over the Nets, Young wandered over to Russell’s stall. Swaggy was dressed the way you imagine Swaggy would be dressed — like Prince had left him clothes in his will. He was wearing a deep purple jacket that may have been suede or velvet, white T-shirt, tight black leather pants and oval-shaped, tinted glasses. Irony being lost on him, Swaggy set in on Russell and teased him about his outfit — a peanut-butter-colored sweat suit with strategically placed rips and holes and quarter-cut-off sleeves. Young laughed and left. Russell did the same. All good.
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Even so, he stressed that the staff’s unrelenting message to the players is about the nagging details of the everyday NBA grind and not a possible playoff push. Russell confirmed the memo has been received. He’d like to make the playoffs, certainly. But he swears he’s trying to ignore any external pressure and instead focus on “how we feel about each other.” That might sound like a cliché, but perhaps he was hinting at personal and professional course correction, and not just for him. After a November 30 road win over the Bulls — part of a brutal stretch that featured four games in five nights and a border crossing into Canada — Young bounded onto the bus on his one good leg and declared, “I like that, you all! That’s what I’m talking ’bout!”
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LINK
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He even linked to a GoldenThroat (Laker Film Room) video!  |
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