8 Responses to “2010 Playoff Series Preview: L.A. Lakers vs. Oklahoma City”

1. Dwight Howard Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

   Lol at Kobe Bryant being the best passer. Though he leads the team in AST% at 23.8%, that's actually pretty terrible for the team's dominant ballhandler and the frequency with which Bryant gets double-teamed.

   He's not playing within the triangle or getting Gasol enough touches this year; his usage rating is too high, and he's one of the primary reasons his team has seen a drop in offensive rating this year. The fact of the matter is that Bynum and especially Gasol are too efficient offensive players to be using the comparatively small number of posessions that they are using.

   Bryant's usage rating is in the Durant/Wade stratosphere, which makes no sense because Bryant is 1) on a much better team and 2) less efficient than Durant and Wade at this point in his career.

2. Neil Paine Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

   Ha, yeah, the passer ratings are just going by Ast%. In fact, when I saw "Best Passer: Kobe Bryant", I thought "now there's something I never thought I'd type."

3. Jason J Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 4:38 pm

   Bryant isn't a bad passer per se. He sees a lot of angles and makes some nice drop offs in the p/r. He's just turnover prone and more of a gunner than any team's primary creator should be - which is one of the challenges of having a system that prizes shooting pgs over actual pgs.

4. Neil Paine Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 4:44 pm

   Yeah, it's always tough to get a read on the passing abilities of players in the Triangle. Which is why Phil is such a believer in the system, since it rejects the notion of the action flowing through 1 single player (or at least being initiated by 1 guy).

5. sp6r=underrated Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

   The lakers are a team living on reputation. If they win a championship, which I highly doubt they will, it will be like 1988 when they struggled their way to a title while getting a lot of fortunate breaks. Still, the thunder are a great match-up for them. LA can use their great front-court to attack the lack of size on the Thunder. If the Thunder are to have a chance it will require Westbrook to take advantage of Fisher's corpse.

   Overall, lakers in 6.

6. AYC Says:
   April 16th, 2010 at 8:21 pm

   It's too bad SA got the 7th seed. I would've loved to see them soften up LA in the first round. As for Kobe, his problem isn't ability to pass, it's willingness...

7. Alvy Says:
   April 17th, 2010 at 12:20 am

   I feel like I've seen a *few* games where Kobe went 6/9 with 15 points, and 4 ast, 5 rebs, and maybe like 2 OT, while Gasol and Bynum lead the team with like 21+ points. Kobe just does whatever he wants sometimes, I dunno.

8. Fritz Novak Says:
   April 19th, 2010 at 6:03 am

   "I feel like I've seen a *few* games where Kobe went 6/9 with 15 points, and 4 ast, 5 rebs, and maybe like 2 OT, while Gasol and Bynum lead the team with like 21+ points. Kobe just does whatever he wants sometimes, I dunno."

   I've seen a lot more games this year when he went 6-24 and Bynum and Gasol were 6/9 and 7/11 with double digit rebounds each. His selfishness was barely even justified last year, and with his injuries and shooting struggles, it's downright shameless. If I see another article about how Kobe has "learned to embrace his teammates" I'm swearing off sports journalism forever.