February 27th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Los Angeles Lakers - 27-35
LA suck lol.
They've gone 3-7 over their last ten, including losses to us (without AD), Memphis, and Atlanta. Ouch. This is for a team that's actively trying to make the playoffs. They did beat Houston, which is a bright spot, but they're going to need to win against the tanking teams that are actively trying to lose if they want to scrape in as the 8th seed. Frankly, Lebron's regular season defense is showing up in meme after meme right now, and they're embarrassing. If Magic Johnson's failures at the trade deadline didn't do it, then this should make you ashamed to be a Laker's fan. Of course, the Lakers are largely followed by 13 year olds, brainwashed by mythos, or 50 year olds who remember when LA was great from 1980-2003, so they have a hard time feeling any kind of shame.
It's got to be difficult being a Lakers fan, in a sense. On one hand, there's this huge ego that comes with it: the giant franchise reputation, the history of winning rings, Kobe, Magic, Shaq, Kareem all in your rafters, statues outside. On the other hand, LA have been about as successful as Miami for the last 15 years, and only about as successful as Detroit for the last 10. They've been regularly outperformed by Golden State, Boston, Cleveland (when LBJ was there), Miami, San Antonio, and hell, even the Clippers have been a better team for 6 or 7 years. The cognitive dissonance must be pretty powerful. LA is simultaneously the best team ever, that everyone wishes their franchise could be, and also failures year after year, undergoing yet another crumbling attempt to kick-start fame by signing big names and trying to acquire another franchise big-man. This time, it's going about as well as the Nash/Dwight plan went. So... yeah.
We beat LA last time, pretty badly. It wasn't quite a wire job in terms of numbers, but it felt that way. Brandon Ingram scored 29, but it felt like he may as well have not showed up. Cheick Diallo dropped 18 rebounds and swatted Ingram out of the air twice. It was amazing. Kuzma was trash, and Lebron posted the big numbers but he never really looked engaged.
Now LA is at home, and in fairness, they have been a much better home team than road this year, and we have been much worse on the road than at home. Ingram has had a couple of good games in a row now too, and his 29.5% three point shooting has been pulled up to 32% as a result of him shooting 6 for his last 7. Due to him having only hit 80 threes all season up to this point, adding another efficient 6 has a weirdly high impact on his overall percentage. He could easily shoot 1 for 5 tonight and his percentage would crumple a little again. Kinda odd, but not nonsensical.
Anywho, I'm hoping we play hard, and make a good showing, but I don't mind if we win or lose. We already smashed the Laker's down at home, for the satisfaction of our own fans. That's enough moral victory for me, I'm back on the tank. Let the LA fans cheer their hearts out while they improve out draft pick. And hey, if we happen to win too, I won't be mad. It's a win/win game.
Lets go and #DoItSomewhereInThe65thPercentileSoIt'sPrettyBigBu tWeStillAren'tAwesome!
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Originally Posted by 13 - 3
