27th November - New Orleans Pelicans VS Los Angeles Lakers - 6-11
Okay so here it is. AD's back in New Orleans, Lebron's here, it's all going to happen. Unfortunately Zion's injured so we won't see that clash quite yet, that will have to wait for later, but otherwise it's all the thing.
Updated Injury Report:
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) November 27, 2019
OUT: Derrick Favors (Personal Reasons)
Questionable: Lonzo Ball (Stomach Virus)
Story: https://t.co/Vb0M5II74u pic.twitter.com/xCUt1SzcdF
Favors is out for undisclosed personal reasons, hopefully everything's well with him and he's okay. Obviously if there's something serious going on in his personal life that's terrible and with any luck it gets sorted neatly, fairly soon. Lonzo may or may not be playing, due to a virus; frankly I'm just fine with him sitting out.
The Lakers are 15-2. They have the NBA's 5th ranked offense, and 2nd ranked defense. There are a few reasons for this, which I'll go over soon, but it's a fairly intimidating reality whichever way you look at it. This is the kind of game where, from a moral standpoint (if you wanna look at it that way) we really should win; that'd be the Hollywood underdog story. Realistically though, a loss here isn't unexpected or surprising in any way.
So why are the Lakers so good? Well, firstly, as is always the case with his teams, Lebron. Lebron's currently averaging 25.6 points, 7.3 rebounds. and 11 assists a game, and he's playing his best defense in years. His passing has reached undeniably all-time-great levels, and he's in full control of that aspect of his game right now, boasting a >3 AST/TO ratio and just carving defenses up. If we're going to find any consolation it's this; he is on the decline athletically, as crazy as that sounds, and it shows in his finishing. He's averaging 49.3% from the floor, which is good but is also his lowest since 2014-15, and after 12 straight years of averaging at least 72% at the rim, he's only shooting 67% there this year. That's still good, of course, but it's a sign of his slight decline; he's no longer able to just shrug off contact, and his first step isn't quite as good at losing defenders anymore.
And of course, the other big piece of the Lakers success is AD. We know how good he can be. He's being used in a sub-optimal way (his number of post ups has increased fairly dramatically in LA, while his number of rolls has dropped, and his 3PAs have jumped up despite no real increase in efficiency) and that's resulted in his lowest FG% ever, his lowest eFG% ever, his lowest rebounding average since his rookie year, and career worst efficiency within the paint, but his finishing at the rim is as elite as ever (shooting 75.5% at the hoop this year) and his defense has been at absolutely elite levels. He's leading the league in blocks again, and has a career best defensive rating; he's strongly in the DPOY race again this year.
This is going to be a tough one. LA are in the top ten in blocks, steals, assists, FG%, and foul rate, and they're not even bad from 3 (they're dead average, 15th in the league right now). They have a lot of size that, without Favors and Zion, we can't really match properly; Lebron, AD, Dwight, Javale, they're all big bodies who can really just force things against smaller defenders. I feel like this could really be a night where Jaxson either thrives (block city) or gets hammered with foul calls early and completely removed from the action.
That said, outside of Lebron and AD, the Lakers only have a single player averaging at least 10 points a night; that's Kuzma, and he's shooting barely 32% from 3. If we can do our best to slow down Lebron, who is the offensive engine of the entire team (they actually have a net negative rating with him off the court) then we might be in for a decent matchup as long as Ingram and Jrue show up meaning business.
Contrary to popular belief, this is winnable. But it will not be easy, and LA are a real monster when healthy; let's go out there and do what we can. #WBD
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Originally Posted by da ThRONe
