Not a shock.
The Lakers are quite frankl;y not a good defensive basketball team and LeBron has gotten older. When the Mark Williams trade didn’t go through for the Lakers that made the Luka trade not really feasible for a team hoping to make a deep run in the West as the No. 3 seed.
Compound that by the fact JJ Reddick kept all five of his starters on the floor in the second half of Game 4 and Jaxson Hays was a DNP in Game 5. None of that makes pragmatic sense in the least.
As this series wore on…LeBron’s second half stats were markedly weaker than his first half stats. The young, tall, athletic Wolves basically ran LeBron down every game and this is what we have seen the past two seasons from LeBron in April and May.
As far as Luka…he’s a pylon defensively as I stated earlier on this blog. For this to work for the Lakers they have to have a strong rim protector inside the paint to cover for Luka’s lack of effort on the defensive end of the court. So this to me even makes Jaxon Hays’ diminshed role even more puzzling.
I’m not a big Lakers fan with the the exception of Austin Reaves so this is not a big deal for me. Life goes on. Que sera, whatever.
From the Minnesota perspective they only played eight players in this game and the Lakers’ complete interior defensive ineptitude made Rudy Gobert look like an offensive basketball player of some sort. I know I called Rudy Gobert a slug earlier this season on this very blog…so let’s wait and see what Rudy Gobert does offensively in the second round before I say I’m sorry for calling him an offensive slug on okcthunderground.com.
Julius Randle?
It would appear to me Julius Randle and his teammates are starting to figure out how to better integrate his outdated, slow, dribble dominated style of offensive basketball. Julius Randle was actually pretty good in this series. So let’s also keep a close eye on his game in Round 2. On how the next team team and coach address Julius Randle.
I think the No. 7 seed for the TWolves is misleading. We all seem to forget they advanced to the Western Conference Finals last season. Unlike the OKC Thunder, this core group in Minnesota has shown its post season chops and has beaten some good teams in post season. Shai’s group going back to the Chris Paul bubble season has yet to beat a good team in the NBA Playoffs.
Who have they beaten who has beaten won a second round game?
Think that’s hyberbole on my part…google it and check me out. Mike J isn’t Little Nick Gallo, Royce Young, or Michael Cage. I tell it like it is on my blog. That’s why I have this Thunder blog. I became weary of the Robert-Allen Pistols Firing type of Thunder coverage in this market.
So for this reason…I actually think at this point these TWolves are more mentally tougher than the Thunder and probably exude a ton of confidence per their leader Anthony Edwards.
But here’s the big but for me…this group of Thunder players have Alex Caruso and Hartenstein to help them be a tougher, smarter team with a chip on their shoulder and some genuine basketball hubris. MJ loves smart hubris. So Alex Caruso and Hartenstein don’t let me down for writing all these nice things about you on my blog.
As far as the Houston-Golden State series goes…from my take its all or nothing for the Warriors in Game 6 at home.
So we’ll see how that game turns out.
The rain has stopped in Oklahoma and hope all of you enjoy the sunshine today.
Mike J