The good, the bad and the story from Lakers overtime win over Heat
By Ronald Agers
The bad from the Los Angeles Lakers’ win:
The Lakers allowed Tyler Herro get untracked.
The question in this game was which Tyler Herro would show up. Would it be the Tyler Herro that played in the NBA Finals in the bubble or the Tyler Herro that regressed significantly the next season. Bubble Herro showed up and continued to hit big shots. He finished with 27 points.
Bam Adebayo was not in foul trouble in the second half!
Adebayo destroyed the Lakers in the second half. After only putting up 6 points in the opening half, he was handing out business cards to finish with a full stat line of 28 points 10 rebounds, 4 assists and 6 steals before fouling out in OT. Even his backups made contributions in his absence.
- Dewayne Dedmon: 4 points (2-3 shooting), 5 rebounds (2 offensive) in 10 minutes.
- Udonis Haslem: 2 points (1-2 shooting) in 5 minutes.
Now let’s compare these stats to the Los Angeles Lakers centers shall we?
Man…the Lake Show Life staff misses JAVALE McGEE!
Sure it would be a cheap shot to say Andre Drummond who is flat out balling the last couple of games, but the Lakers would be a much different squad if they would replace one of these centers with JaVale McGee. There are nights like these when they are just terrible.
- DeAndre Jordan: 1 point on a free throw, 5 rebounds.
- Dwight Howard: 0 points, 3 rebounds and he fouled out in only 11 minutes.
Man…this team turns the ball over too much!
Okay…Lake Show Life is beating a dead horse here. The Lakers finished with 22 turnovers.
Man…Russell Westbrook turns the ball over too much!
Oh the staff will discuss this point here. Russell Westbrook is currently leading the NBA in turnovers with five per game. He had yet another triple double in this game and was HUGE in crunch time but near quadruple-doubles are as common as his triple doubles.
Look as of this writing Russell Westbrook can’t shoot and Lakers fans can live with that (For a while!). His defensive rotations is spotty at times and it gives something for the staff of Lake Show Life to write about.
But some of these turnovers are unacceptable and careless. Anthony Davis probably has “Wilson” tattooed on his cheek from one of his ridiculous passes. He’s got to clean this up. He finished with 8 turnovers to go with 25 points, 12 rebounds and 14 assists.
Maybe more time on the bench would help watching a few bench players play when they have their shot going. Sadly that won’t happen because of…
Frank Vogel’s rotations…
Lake Show Life just mentioned how hot Malik Monk and Wayne Ellington was in the first half right? Well for their reward, they got to sit 3/4ths of the third quarter instead of riding both of their hot hands. It’s starting to be a strange trend to watch Vogel fold his arms and watch Russell Westbrook and Kent Bazemore throw up bricks while he has hot shooters on the bench.
The Lakers (Check that Frank Vogel!) was very lucky that Russell Westbrook started hitting shots and finally deciding to play this guy who in the end was the story of the game.