Pau Gasol Is Still On The Lakers, For Now

Pau Gasol is probably breathing yet another sigh of relief. The rumored Gasol for Andrew Bynum trade went from "done" to "well, hold on a minute" to "no deal" in a hurry. The Cavaliers apparently wouldn't relinquish a first round draft choice or a prospect, be it Dion Waiters or Sergey Karasev and talks quickly stopped. The surprising part of this being the Cavs traded not one, but three draft choices (and gave the Bulls the option to swap first round picks in 2015) for Luol Deng, who, like Gasol, is a rental.

This means Gasol remains a Laker and I'm quite certain the team will be looking to move him rather aggressively between now and the trade deadline on February 20th. As for who is a realistic trade partner, nobody really knows, as no new trade rumors have surfaced in the past few weeks. It doesn't help that the Bulls are apparently trying to move Carlos Boozer as well, so potential suitors looking for big man help would probably call Chicago first because Boozer somehow earns less than Gasol, while being under team control for another year. The market right now is not looking good for the Lakers, who seem inclined to move Gasol for a first rounder, something I think is good if it's in this year's draft, which is slated to be the deepest draft since the 2003 NBA draft.

There's always the alternative: the Lakers could keep Gasol for the remainder of the season. This, while great from an emotional point of view, does not help the Lakers rebuild at all, unless they managed to resign Gasol for cheap during the off season. Even then, the Lakers would be retaining a 34 year old power forward, who has had injury problems in the past few seasons and would likely be the subject of trade rumors yet again. This is less than desirable, especially when the free agent market could have big men like Greg Monroe and Chris Bosh available, not to mention the crown jewel of the class: Carmelo Anthony. Retaining Gasol also likely ensures a more competitive team for the rest of the season, which would hinder LA's desire to get into the Top-10 in this years' draft. While I would very much like Gasol to play the rest of his career with the team, I don't think it's smart to keep him, or to extend him, especially not if you can offload his remaining salary or gain a draft pick by trading him.

The reason why the Lakers could keep Gasol is Mitch Kupchak may be in denial about this team's ability. Kupchak, like most fans, is discouraged by the insane amount of injuries and, should the Lakers still be in the playoff hunt by February 20th, would likely retain Gasol and try to make one last playoff push once Kobe Bryant, Steve Blake and Jordan Farmar all return around this time. This would be foolish, of course. As much as I think a fully healthy Lakers squad could compete with the best of them, by the time they all come back, they will likely require some time to get back into their grooves and the Lakers will likely be enough games out of the playoffs to require near perfection, not to mention Bryant having to learn to play with all of his new teammates and vice versa.

It's not a good situation for the Lakers to be in and we can only hope Mitch handles it as well as past personnel moves he has made. In the meantime, let's enjoy Pau's remaining games as a member of the Lakers; it could come to an abrupt end within the next six weeks.

Report: The Lakers Are Close to Trading Pau Gasol

I know how the vast majority of Lakers fans will feel about this one. The Lakers have been in some pretty serious trade talks with the Cleveland Cavaliers about former Lakers center Andrew Bynum and not for the reasons you would want to hear; this is about Bynum's contract being non-guaranteed and not for "basketball reasons". Rest assured, this is a trade with the Lakers' future in mind and, if you don't mind having a terrible team for this season, it's a good one. The Lakers are very unlikely to get an equal or better player for Gasol without giving up draft picks, something the Lakers are not willing to trade because of how few of them the team has left, so why not go after financial security for the future?

To clarify, if the Lakers manage to get the trade done by today (it's a 48 hour wait period for the trade to go through), they can waive Bynum by Tuesday's deadline and save 6.3 million of Bynum's 12.3 million for this season. This is a good thing because it will ensure the Lakers get below the luxury tax and reset their "repeater tax clock", so they wouldn't get penalized under the new CBA and would have more money to spend in the upcoming free agency periods.

There's a few reasons this trade hasn't gone down yet, for one, the two teams haven't discussed other players at the moment, but a straight up Gasol-for-Bynum swap is not possible because the salaries do not match up. The Lakers want to get another asset as well, be it a first round draft pick or 20 year old, Russian small forward Sergey Karasev, who was the 19th pick of the 2013 draft. As it is, the Cavaliers have not been willing to include either in earlier trade talks and have reportedly offered the Lakers a 2nd round pick, but that isn't enough for the Lakers. In an ideal world, the Lakers can somehow pry Dion Waiters out of this trade, who the Cavs have reportedly put on the trading block, but the chance that happens is close to 0.

There's no surprise that the Lakers had been shopping Gasol, however I think most of us would have preferred Gasol going for something more than financial flexibility. It's not all bad; if the Lakers can get a first round pick out of this, then it's definitely a good trade. If not, then we better hope Mitch makes some good signings in the upcoming Free Agent class. Either way, it appears Pau's time with the Lakers is indeed over. At the very least, it will help the Lakers' draft position for the 2014 NBA Draft.

It's Time For Our Annual Pau Gasol Trade Talk

Here we go again. Pau Gasol has officially unofficially hit the trade market this season, a bit earlier than years' past thanks to the apparent issues between the disgruntled big man and coach  Mike D'Antoni. We went over this last season, with big names like Josh Smith and Ryan Anderson coming up in trade rumors; the Lakers decided to stand pat, and it seemed like the right choice when Dwight Howard left via free agency. However, Gasol has gotten off to an atrocious start, averaging 14.4 points per game (the second lowest of his career), while having a WS/48 of .033 (lowest of his career) and a PER of 15.2 (another career low) while shooting only 41.8% from the floor (by far the lowest of his career) and looking thoroughly underwhelming on both ends of the floor. Gasol is somehow tied with Nick Young as the Lakers leaders in points per game, which also happens to be the second lowest points per game leader in the NBA, just ahead of Milwaukee (O.J. Mayo leads them with 13.9 points).

According to ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, the Lakers would prefer to keep Gasol on the team, but are open to trading the former All-Star. The combination of this being his final year under contract, his sub-par play and the recent comments he had about D'Antoni and the offensive system he runs could lead to a trade. According to "Sources" the Lakers have not yet made a trade offer to any team, or have discussed a potential deal with any potential suitor, but they are listening on any and all trade offers. As with any potential deal, there are obstacles to work around; Gasol will earn 19.3 million this season, which is an enormous cap hit even if it is for only the rest of this season. The Lakers have also indicated that they will not be taking on extra contracts, or any contracts that isn't an expiring contract. The Lakers are being very protective of their future cap space and would like to retain the ability to offer one max contract during next year's Free Agency, shutting the door on a bunch of potential trades.

There are a number of things to consider for any team interested in Gasol. For starters, how effective can Gasol be moving forward? He is 33 years old and coming off of his two worst seasons of his career. Is his decline system based, or is he simply too worn out to continue to produce at a high level? Remember, Gasol has a lot of mileage on his aging legs, between the deep playoff runs the Lakers have had in recent years and his extensive career with the Spanish National Team.

The Lakers will need to receive some size in any potential Gasol trade; if Gasol is traded, the only starter quality big man on the roster would be Jordan Hill and his extensive injury history. Chris Kaman is also available, but D'Antoni has basically refused to give him any minutes, favoring the fairly unproven Robert Sacre instead. And Ryan Kelly still exists, but he in no way can handle the Center position for anything other than a few minutes. With the Lakers trading away their 2015 and 2017 first round picks to Phoenix and Orlando, they will be looking to add draft picks in any Gasol trade. The only teams that would exchange a draft pick for Gasol would be playoff teams without a post presence. Realistically, the teams that might be interested in Gasol are the Boston Celtics, the Memphis Grizzlies and potentially the Charlotte Bobcats and Washington Wizards, though none of them really have any incentive to trade for Gasol at the moment. Of those teams, the Celtics might be able to make something work because of the draft picks they acquired by trading with the Brooklyn Nets.

Another potential factor is how Kobe Bryant feels about trading Gasol. They are close friends, and I'm sure Bryant would like to keep Gasol on the team for the rest of his career, but I also think Bryant is looking into the Lakers immediate future and knows that Gasol may not be the player to help the Lakers win a championship in the next two seasons.

A Gasol trade seems unlikely at the moment, but that could very easily change, depending on what direction the team takes in the upcoming weeks and what General Manager Mitch Kupchak wants to do once the team finds it's identity. Personally, I would prefer to trade him for first round draft picks and make the rebuilding process a little bit faster, but I would not be opposed to seeing Gasol on the Lakers for the rest of his career. Though I certainly hope that isn't the case.

The More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same

This has been the whole Lakers' team mentality during this run, save for Nash.

The Lakers have been seemingly cursed this season as they have lost 40 games of injury to their starters alone, but it was usually in balanced fashion, as in one perimeter player and one post player is out. Not for this stretch, as everybody over 6’10’’ not named Robert Sacre is injured right now (Pau Gasol with a concussion, Dwight Howard with a torn labrum, Steve Blake with a torn abdomen and Jordan Hill with loose fragments in his hip which will require season ending surgery). The Lakers are going with the smallest ball possible, as they have had stretches where Metta World Peace and Earl Clark/Antawn Jamison are playing center and power forward and this is a bigger problem than turnovers and bad shots combined. The positive news here is Clark’s and Hill’s Per 36 numbers are nearly identical, the only difference really being how physical Hill is compared to Clark, though Clark is far more versatile, as he can slide to the outside and defense perimeter players (like he did on Wednesday vs. the Spurs, as he took on Manu Ginobili).

Let’s get one thing straight: Defense wins championships. No team has a chance of winning it all if they allow 105+ points per game. It’s the reason why the D’Antoni-Steve Nash led Phoenix Suns never made it past the Western Conference Finals. The Lakers have some excellent man to man defenders with World Peace, Kobe Bryant and Howard but the team’s lack of defensive fundamentals is seriously disturbing; nobody on the team rotates to help the help defender, and on occasions, nobody rotates to help the initial defender. This is the cause of the uncontested shots most opposing teams have in or around the paint. The Lakers lack of trust in each other this late into the season is something to seriously be concerned about and it makes me question whether this team can ever make a deep post season run. D’Antoni may have fixed the offense, or better said, D’Antoni made it easier for Nash to fix the offense (103.2 PPG, good for 4^th in the league) as the Princeton wasn’t a system apt for Nash but D’Antoni hasn’t been preaching defense at all this season, save for the rare occasions when an opposing team makes an early run, only to have D’Antoni call a time out to get everybody organized. The Lakers defense is among the bottom of the league, as they surprisingly don’t allow more points than they score despite their 15-21 record. The Lakers allow 101.7 points per game, good for 26^th in the league, and that’s something that’s not even close to cutting it in this league. The one constant though out NBA history has been: the team that plays defense usually ends up winning it all. It doesn’t matter how offensively oriented the league has become; defense is still the most important aspect of the game.

I am hopefully Howard’s injury won’t keep him out for long, and Los Angeles can get back to having somebody back there to protect the rim, as having World Peace and Jamison back there made for a lot of easy layups and in the paint, uncontested jumpers. Howard’s presence alone is a huge difference maker (reference the last time LA played OKC), as guys generally change their shots as to try not to get swatted into the 10^th row. And while Gasol may be softer than marshmallows, he still provides some defensive value as his length is still there to help contest shots (though I still insist on trading him while he has value, especially now that Earl Clark as made a name for himself and Artest is reverting to last year’s horrid form). The Lakers are very fixable because of the talent the team has, but it won’t get done until the team itself does some serious soul searching and starts to work hard on the defensive end.

As an end note, kudos to Howard about a month ago for calling Kobe on his free safety style defense. Bryant told him not to do it again; Howard said he would do it again if Kobe didn’t rotate. It takes some serious guts to tell Kobe what to do on his own team, definitely the make of a Franchise Player. 

Pau Gasol Could Get Traded Soon And That Might be a Bad Thing

Oh boy, to say Pau Gasol’s season so far has been disappointing is a huge understatement. It started off on the wrong foot, as Gasol reportedly had knee tendinitis during Pre-Season, in which former head coach Mike Brown decided to play the Spaniard through it anyways, thinking Gasol would get better if he simply played through it. That hasn’t been the case, as his knee tendinitis continued to worsen to the point where Gasol’s mid-range shot looked entirely flat because he can’t jump as high and thus strains on his mid range shot and his help defense was very slow. Mike D’Antoni, recognized the fact that he can kill two birds with one stone by starting Antawn Jamison, benched Gasol indefinitely, until his knee tendinitis has cleared up. So, right now Gasol’s value is at an all time low because, realistically, how many teams would be interested in an aging Power Forward with balky knees and an enormous contract?

Nonetheless, a few teams have reportedly offered deals for Gasol, as well as interest in other players from the Lakers themselves. Here are the most talked about ones:

·         Pau Gasol to Atlanta for Josh Smith. This rumor was hot during the offseason, after the Lakers acquired Dwight Howard and why wouldn’t it be? The Hawks were in the middle of cleaning house by getting rid of Joe Johnson’s ridiculous contract as well as trading draft bust Marvin Williams to Utah, not to mention Smith being a childhood friend of Howard and the Lakers trying everything to keep Howard past this season. Obviously, the Lakers win in this deal since Smith is getting paid about 7 million dollars less per year than what Gasol makes and he’s 27. His skill set is something the Lakers would love to have at the 4 spot, as he’s the best kind of “tweener” because of his incredible athleticism and his natural outside game make him hard to stop on fastbreaks, not to mention his tenacious defense (in case you were curious, Smith averages the same amount of blocks per game as Dwight Howard with 2.2) and the fact that he may very well be the best passing big man in the league. This deal is my favorite of the bunch, no matter how unlikely it is. 

·         Pau Gasol to New Orleans for Ryan Anderson: This is purely the Lakers reported interest in the Hornet’s stretch 4 and it seems it would be a pretty fair deal for both sides if not for Anderson getting paid about 10 million dollars less per year. His contract is very accessible for a player of his caliber. Anderson is an extremely underrated player as he is seen purely as a 3 point shooter when, in fact, he’s a much more accomplished big man that can put up points from anywhere on the court, and rebound well enough to not be seen as a one dimensional player. His WS/48 has been an incredibly high .179 for his career (for reference, Kobe Bryant’s career WS/48 is .185). Many thought Anderson benefited heavily from having Howard on his team in Orlando, but as he has proven this season, he can be a team’s best player and still be efficient in his scoring. This deal would need to include another player(s) from New Orleans to help balance out salaries, but since the Hornets have virtually no bad contracts, this deal looks highly unlikely as well, especially since nobody really knows how much interest the Hornets have to begin with.

·         Pau Gasol to Toronto for Andrea Bargnani, Jose Calderon, and Linas Kleiza. And now we get to the most likely of all the deals as Toronto has reportedly offered the Lakers this deal already, though the Lakers have shot it down and not because they don’t like the deal (it is a very good one for Los Angeles) but because Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak want to assess the team with Steve Nash and Gasol healthy before moving him or not. Let’s being with Kleiza who is…a guy. Kleiza is a jack of all trades kind of guy, but he’s not really all that good at any of those things. He can play defense, shoot an inconsistent 3 ball and generally not lose you the game, but he’d pretty much be there to warm the bench over in L.A. The meat of the deal is with Calderon and Bargnani; the 31 year old Spaniard is currently an above average point guard who can shoot with the best of them and is careful with the ball. This season, he’s shooting 47% from deep and averaging 7.1 assists per game despite losing the starting role to Kyle Lowry. Calderon, along with Jamison or Bargnani, would have the 6^th man role, giving Steve Nash much needed rest (remember: Nash has never played more than 35 minutes a game for his career) and keeping the offense smooth. Bargnani was the 1^st overall pick in 2006; he has largely failed to live up to the standards of it. He’s another stretch 4, perfectly apt to run D’Antoni’s system, but I worry about his rebounding and his defense; this season, he is only averaging 4.4 rebounds despite being listed as 7 feet tall. His DWS is 0.2 and his OWS is -0.1. He has struggled to start the season, but his skill set is great to have alongside Howard in the middle. I think the Lakers will seriously consider this deal, as it seems it’s the best they can get right now for Gasol.  

The Lakers are smart to hold on to Gasol because we don’t know how well he can perform in this system when he is healthy and playing with Steve Nash. I think the front office would prefer to wait until Nash comes back before seriously shopping Gasol; teams need to know Gasol isn’t as declined as he looks and can be a valuable asset to most teams moving forward. Despite looking pretty bad to start the season, Gasol still has his incredibly high Basketball I.Q. and good passing to help jump start most offenses. Right now, the Lakers don’t look like they’ll trade Gasol yet and I agree with the decision from a basketball viewpoint.

Antawn Jamison Starting Over Pau Gasol is a Matter of When Rather than If

The NBA season is under full swing and the Lakers have been the most bipolar team in the league 16 games into the season. The Lakers have yet to play with everyone healthy as point guards Steve Nash and Steve Blake have been out with a leg fracture and an abdominal strain respectively. So far, Nash only played in two games (both with Mike Brown and his Princeton Offense) and Blake has only played in 7 games (running the Princeton in which he looked extremely comfortable and a couple of games of Bernie Bickerstaff’s free flowing offense).

But having Nash and Blake has had no effect on Pau Gasol’s game so far; he has been, at times, atrocious and at other times, merely adequate. This team wasn’t a fit for Gasol before Mike D’Antoni jumped on board, but now it seems inevitable that either Gasol gets traded (Atlanta forward Josh Smith being the player on my wish list if this were the case) or goes into the 6^th man role with Antawn Jamison starting alongside Dwight Howard to help stretch the defense and give Howard more room to operate. Jamison started the season extremely bad; at one point, Jamison was shooting 16% from beyond the arc, he has since improved it to 30% with this 4 game stretch of good games (minus the Indiana one, but everybody not named Kobe Bryant were missing shots left and right). Before these 4 games, Jamison was 22.2% from deep and a measly 35.5% total shooting, however he has been scorching hot in the past 4 games as he has made 28 out of 48 for a percentage of 58.3% from the floor. He has averaged 17.8 points per game and 9.5 rebounds per game as it seems Jamison needed a little bit of time to find his groove with this team.

Straight up, the numbers heavily favor Gasol for one big reason: Gasol is averaging 35.2 minutes a game to Jamison’s 18.4:

Stat	Pau Gasol	Antawn Jamison
Points Per Game	12.7	7.3
Rebounds Per Game	8.9	4.6
Assists Per Game	3.6	0.7
Shooting Percentage	42.3%	47.3%
3 point shooting percentage	28.6%	30.4%
Free Throw Percentage	75.9%	66.7%

At first glance, Gasol is looking better than Jamison however, the Per 36 minutes a game numbers favor Jamison in some key aspects:

Stats	Gasol	Jamison
Points per 36 minutes	13.0	14.2
Rebounds per 36 minutes	9.1	9.1
Assists per 36 minutes	3.7	1.3
Shooting Percentage	42.3%	47.3%
3 point shooting percentage	28.6%	30.4
Free throw percentage	75.9%	66.7

The advanced numbers don’t favor Gasol either as Jamison has been outplaying for at least these past 4 games and has been steadily getting better all season long:

Advanced Stat	Pau Gasol	Antawn Jamison
PER	15.2	15.8
True Shooting Percentage	47.7%	56.7%
Effective Field Goal Percentage	42.9%	54.8%
Total Rebound Percentage	14.2%	14.1%
Turnover Percentage	12.4%	10.5%
Win Shares per 48	.120	.155

So, for those who don’t know: PER is a measurement of how efficient a player is when he is on the floor; 15 is league average. True shooting percentage is field goal percentage from 2 point range, 3 point range and the free throw line. Effective field goal percentage adjusts for the fact that a 3 point shot is worth more than a 2 point shot. Total rebound percentage and Turnover percentage are pretty self explanatory and I decided to use Win Shares per 48 because Win Shares wouldn’t be fair to Jamison having played 269 less minutes than Gasol (it’s similar to Baseball’s WAR statistic) while WS/48 tells us how many games the player won in 48 minutes; .100 is league average. Gasol being worse than Jamison in every stat except for rebound percentage, where they are neck and neck, is troubling.

This isn’t Gasol having a bad stretch either; he was beginning to struggle last season, but wasn’t as ineffective playing with the emerging Andrew Bynum because Bynum doesn’t dominate the post like Howard does. Clearly, Gasol isn’t a power forward who can share the low block and find his offense elsewhere; he needs his back to the basket, something the team will not be giving him because Howard is far superior in the post and commands double teams, something Gasol hasn’t done since 2010. Gasol is a very smart player, however, and his high post passing is among the best in the league (Josh Smith a close second), but his jumper just doesn’t have the range D’Antoni requires to stretch the floor. Here are the shooting percentages per ranges for each player:

Range	Pau Gasol	Antawn Jamison
At Rim	65.9%	88.9%
3-9 Feet	27.1%	45.5%
10-15 Feet	36.0%	100%
16-3 point line	41.5%	50.0%
3 point	28.6%	30.4%

As expected for a 7 footer, Gasol is finishing at the rim right around his career rate and his 16-3 point jump shot has been spot on to start the year, but from any other range, Gasol’s numbers are alarmingly bad. He isn’t a 3 point shooter, so 28% isn’t all that bad, but what is up with his TURRIBLE 27% from 3-9 feet? That is absolutely unacceptable for a big. My theory is Gasol is forcing up more shots as his offensive role with the team is becoming smaller and smaller. Meanwhile, Jamison is burning the nets from all ranges (to be fair, his 100% from the 10-15 range is on one spectacular shot against the Grizzlies). Jamison is not a player who requires touches in the post to create his offense; in fact, Jamison is more comfortable playing off of the ball and having his teammates help create a shot for him (something Howard has been doing well so far). I’m very comfortable with Gasol coming off of the bench to bolster the 2^nd unit ala Manu Ginobili and getting his post touches, however it’s clear that Gasol would not be playing at the end of games because he can’t coexist with Howard and his clogging up the lane. For now, Gasol will be starting alongside Howard, Bryant, Metta World Peace and Darius Morris (soon to be Steve Nash hopefully) but his role will continue to diminish as Jamison continues to find his groove within D’Antoni’s offense.

On to tonight’s game: the Lakers will face off against Howard’s former team, the Orlando Magic (5-10). The Magic have been horrid on offense averaging a measly 91.1 points per game on the year while allowing 96.4 per game. Meanwhile, Los Angeles’ offense has been running on all cylinders averaging 100.6 per game. A lot of defense has been played during the D’Antoni era as LA is only giving up 95.9 points per game.

 Starting Lineups:

Position	Magic	Lakers
Point Guard	Jameer Nelson	Darius Morris
Shooting Guard	Aaron Afflalo	Kobe Bryant
Small Forward	Moe Harkless	Metta World Peace
Power Forward	Glen Davis	Pau Gasol
Center	Nikola Vucevic	Dwight Howard

Game Preview: Denver Nuggets at Los Angeles Lakers

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