2. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is a rotational player again!!!!
At the beginning of the season, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was playing his way so far down on the Lakers bench, that he would have needed NBA League Pass to watch the game. He was throwing up bricks, looked uncomfortable and the Lakers were looking for trade announcements even though he isn’t eligible until December 15th.
How about now.
KCP scored in double figures for the fifth straight game, scoring 19 points, which included 15 in the first half. He scored the way the Lakers needed him to…
From the 3-point line.
KCP dropped three shots from the land of beyond in the first half. Here’s what even crazier, he drew two Heat players into fouls while he was behind the 3-point line, getting three free throws. After doing that, he knocked all of the free throws down.
You may read this and say…so? But, how many NBA players draw the foul behind the arc and not take advantage of it by missing one or two of the free throws? KCP is in a great rhythm and it carried over into his team defense as well. The Heat guards did not shoot well at all and were harassed all night long (More on that later).
Then in the fourth quarter, when the Heat cut into the Lakers lead, knocking it down to nine points, Caldwell-Pope got the ball in the left corner and took the ball strong to a cup for a difficult lay-up to basically seal the win for the Lakers.
I want to give a special shout-out to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. It wasn’t looking good for him coming out of the gate. As a shooter who was under as much pressure and was ridiculed by fans for his poor play, it’s not easy to do what KCP has done the last few weeks.
He has come from an afterthought and a trade piece to maybe an asset that the Lakers need going forward this season. I said it in the last post game against Orlando, he tried to go strong to basket and dunk on somebody. He missed and the ball went back all the way to the backcourt from the force of it going off the back iron.
After that…I knew KCP would be all right for the time being!