The Lakers are back in action tonight after having a long couple of days
to think about their horrid offensive performance against the Indiana Pacers on
Tuesday night at the Staples Center. Tonight, they’ll play their Western
Conference Quarterfinal opponents from last season, the revamped Denver
Nuggets, who return largely unchanged except for their participation in the
massive four-team trade during the offseason by the Lakers, Nuggets, Philadelphia
76ers and Orlando Magic; the Nuggets sent defensive and three point specialist
Aaron Afflalo and stretch four and strictly a scorer Al Harrington in return
for swingman Andre Iguodala. Personally, I think the Nuggets got a great deal
out of this, acquiring a player who has had experience being “the man” and has
pretty extensive postseason experience for a team who is largely inexperienced
in that aspect.
Los Angeles (7-8) dumped Denver (8-8) out of the opening round of last
spring’s postseason, winning 96-87 in Game 7 at Staples Center as Kobe Bryant
averaged 29.1 points in the series and Steve Blake had an enormous 19 points
and 3 assists in the final game, having replaced a largely ineffective Ramon Sessions.
The Superstar guard isn’t far off that pace this season, leading the NBA
with 27.7 points per game. He’s averaging 31.8 over the past four games, but
the Lakers have dropped three of them to fall to 2-3 under Coach Mike D’Antoni.
They failed to capitalize on another big night by Bryant in Tuesday’s
79-77 home loss to Indiana, giving up the decisive basket with 0.1 seconds to
play. Bryant overcame the flu to pour in 40 points, but he committed 10
turnovers while Los Angeles shot a season-low 31.6 percent from the field and
missed 20 of 43 from the line.
The Lakers have been the most
polarizing team so far this season. The Lakers have had games where they look
completely horrid on the fundamentals of the game; Tuesday night was an
excellent example as the Lakers missed more free throws than they made (23
missed) and continued to turn the ball over at an alarming rate, turning it
over 19 times to increase the season average to 17.20. On the other hand, there
are nights like last Saturday in Dallas, where the Lakers looked like the best team
in the league scoring with balance, playing hard on defense, and not turning
the ball over at such a high rate.
The leaders for the Lakers so
far: Bryant in scoring with 27.7, Dwight Howard in rebounds with 10.5, Bryant
in assists with 4.9, Bryant in steals with 1.5 and Howard in blocks with 2.8.
So far, this has largely been a two man team with Howard being second in
scoring with 17.9 and clearly being the second option behind Bryant.
Surprisingly, Pau Gasol seems to have taken a backseat to Metta World Peace, but
it seems unintentional because Gasol still has more shots taken and free throws
taken than World Peace, yet he’s averaging 13.1 points per game to World Peace’s
13.3; this speaks more of Gasol’s struggles within D’Antoni’s offense than
World Peace’s best start to the season since the 2008-2009 season.
For Denver, Iguodala leads the
team with 15.7 points per game, Ty Lawson in assists with 7.6, Kenneth Faried
in rebounds with 11.1, Lawson in steals with 2.1 and Kosta Koufos with 1.7
blocks per game. This is a very balanced team that could be a sleeper in the
West. Lawson and Andre Miller could be the best one-two punch at the point
guard position in the league, not to mention the size this team has in the
middle with Koufos, Timofey Mozgov and JaVale McGee all being over 7 feet tall. This without
mentioning the talented Wilson Chandler coming off of the bench for Danilo Gallinari, and Denver suddenly becomes a very dangerous and deep team.
In Laker injury news: Steve Blake
will be out for another 2 weeks after an MRI on Wednesday revealed that he
still has an abdominal strain. Steve Nash will also be sidelined for at least
another week as his leg fracture appears to be healing at a snail’s pace. In
the meantime, Darius Morris and Chris Duhon will continue to fill in at the
point guard slot.
Starting Lineups:
Position
|
Nuggets
|
Lakers
|
Point Guard
|
Ty Lawson
|
Darius Morris
|
Shooting Guard
|
Andre
Iguodala
|
Kobe
Bryant
|
Small Forward
|
Danilo Galinari
|
Metta World Peace
|
Power Forward
|
Kenneth
Faried
|
Pau
Gasol
|
Center
|
Kosta Koufos
|
Dwight Howard
|
