What the Heck Happend with the Lakers?

I was asked over at Quora to explain the Lakers’ woes this season. Enjoy! Head to Quora and vote me up if you like the answer.
Read Quote of Andres Alvarez’s answer to 2012-13 NBA Season: Why were predictions about the Lakers this season so wrong? on Quora

11 Responses to "What the Heck Happend with the Lakers?"

Brian says:

January 23, 2013 at 12:23 am

Thanks for hyping the Coach Nick videos recently, I’ve really been enjoying those.
HasaniDavis says:

January 23, 2013 at 10:35 am

I am mad at you if you are going to keep talking about Coach D.
saying its all his fault and he cant coach bigs is a HUGE misnomer. its more of the media saying things and running with it with zero fact behind it.
for example, the claim now is PHIL JACKSON would be using this team right because HE CAN COACH BIGS. really? the guy whose offenses features, jordan, ron harper, pippen, lamar odom who is just a tall small forward.. is somehow a great coach of big men? but D’Antoni is somehow a guard friendly coach when he has produced, Amare, Marrion as leading scorers on the suns, AL harrington, David Lee in NY, then Amare in NYK, i mean other than the year joe johnson was there, can you find me a time where a guard was doing all the scoring in a dantoni system? even when the knicks had no talent and ray felton was scoring 17ppg you had amare scoring 27. knicks get melo and chandler the next year and your 3 top scorers turn into melo (forward) amare (forward) chandler (center)
Nash was usually the 5th highest scorer on the suns, and at the start of the season last year, is wasnt Toney douglas and landry fields taking all the shots. and when he got to nyk it wasnt chris douhan taking all the shots.
if you sit down and read the book (as educated geeks something we SHOULD all be doing) you will see the offense works around options but in application you can see the offense works best for bigs.
Even during linsanity (which is really what everyone is basing his offense off of) tyson chandler was scoring a lot and 6’9 landry fields was getting a lot of alley oops and backdoor cuts around the basket. and shooting forward Steve novack was the other leading scorer…. so please dispell this rumor that Dantoni cant get bigs to score.
Andres Alvarez says:

January 23, 2013 at 10:46 am

Hasani,
Given that D’Antoni came into a Lakers team with a fading Gasol and an injured Dwight to go with old and possible falling apart Nash and Kobe, it’s kind of unfair to pin much blame on him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg1OPaggGVE – It reminds me of this scenario. Of course, that’s how it goes a lot of times for coaches.

I do think Phil would be a better coach, how much though?
Hasani Davis says:

January 23, 2013 at 11:13 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ga49vPn2ao is a better video. its the breakdown of his system for non coaches to understand.
other than the one year ray felton came to town and started jackin up shots. no mike Dantoni team has had a guard take over 11 shots per game. most of his teams the shots come from the forwards and center.

I debate if phil jackson is a “better coach” because of age. how much coaching can you do when you will only coach home games and only plan on coaching for a year or two and then want to install your successor? it happens in football all the time, big name coach takes a job, dosent win a championship and then installs his buddy as successor and retires. Xs and Os i feel dantoni is a phenominal coach.

but he has a bad reputation with the media this year like lebron had last year. the system works, this is why they run this offense in San ANtonio and nobody says DUncan and splitter arent working well.

Ill sum it up with saying this… its not that Dantoni is a bad coach, its that teams only seem to call him in when they are bad
Statmandu (@lovethoseknicks) says:

January 23, 2013 at 12:45 pm

I’m not saying that D’Antoni is a better coach than Jackson, but the criticism of D’Antoni coming from some ex players and media is proof positive that you can become a professional athlete or get a job in radio, TV, newspaper etc.. covering basketball and have no idea WTF you are talking about.

The guy is only there a few weeks, half the team was out for a good portion of that time, Dwight Howard is less than 100% (and making a good case that he has a mild form of Aspergers given he no idea how to behave socially at all), Paul Gasol has more in common with the average teenager than the average winning athlete, Kobe Bryant plays like a moron on 3 out of 4 nights and blames everyone else for his failings, the LA media makes NY seem sane (and we have Berman) etc.. Metta World Peace has been more professional and stable that the rest of these bozos. That’s saying a lot considering he’s in therapy and probably on meds. Nash would have been better off in Toronto.

The Lakers are a joke, but they’d be a joke for any coach. Until they are close to 100% healthy, settle down, stop thinking about their own touches, minutes, points, whether they are a starter or not and decide to play hard on both ends, they are going to keep losing. They are not deep enough to contend for a title, but not making the playoffs is asinine
Hoopdon says:

January 23, 2013 at 1:39 pm

Hey Andres, and everyone else, check out my post regarding The Lakers’ failure. I went with diminishing returns as a reason for their epic crash.

hoopdon.weebly.com
Hasani Davis says:

January 23, 2013 at 2:06 pm

well lets look at it like nerds for a moment.
Steve nash is a guy who excels at a motion and 1-3-1 type offense. he needs options and people moving to make use of his primary skillset. the lakers with the talent you have on the roster make zero use of this. so you have a slow plodding pg who just comes down the floor and tosses it to kobe and waits or dumps it into the post and waits…. you could have gotten this out of ANY other pg (like sessions) and saved the 9 mil for more depth.

Howard while a great wins produced player in the past, dosent have an entire team built around him anymore. when in orlando it was 4 shooters standing around dwight, so rebounds and shots came easy and efficent. when he could use brute str and power he could score, now he is older and the nba officials are calling a much cleaner game ESPECIALLY on the offensive end… he has to use finess and skill, which are qualties that require hard work and training…. not things Dhow is known for. When I started refereeing, the next great nba superstars in the AAU circut were dejaun wagner , Kwame brown, Amare Lebron and Dwight howard. The problem with this was, the other guys were Jrs and Seniors, Howard was perhaps 13 at the time. So he has been told he was a superstar since before he even had facial hair. he is not exactly a hard working type. so I cant see him adjusting well from his POWER game to more finess.

Meta was good 3 years ago, but a defennnsive specialist who cant keep anyone in front of him and has limited offense… is required on the team as a starter…. for what exactly? the offense would be better served obtaining a young body would would run the floor , move without the ball, and shoot outside shots as well as catch alley oops from nash. Perfect answer would be picking up my favorite knick, Chris copeland. as he will not see much playing time being they already have too many small forwards who like to shoot in melo jr smith and Novack. but with a 19points per 36min, and an almost .1 win/48 yhr guy would be a perfect solution at this space.

Kobe, compounds the problems. he dosent defend well but nash defends worse. and you cant ask him to shoot less because he is shooting and scoring WELL. but his high amount of shots is hurting howards feelings and gasols feelings…. did i also mention that the ball being in his hands cuts down on the reason nash is playing?

sorry so long winded. and I dont want to offend the host by typing so much so I will stop here :)
Ed Herzog says:

January 23, 2013 at 4:47 pm

“In the playoffs team tend to shorten their rotation to their top 6 players.”

What???? I’m hoping that’s a typo cause that would be crazy. Just looking at a few teams from last year:

Heat had 9 players average 10+ minutes per game during the playoffs; Spurs had 10; Thunder had 8.

I’ve been watching the NBA for 30+ years and I’ve never seen a team use a 6 man rotation during the playoffs.
Chris says:

January 23, 2013 at 4:58 pm

Like the poster above stated…They really need to bench MWP and find an athletic Sf that can defend and shoot the 3…the fact that Matt Barnes was let go in the place of this guy is amazing. I think the lakers problems are mainly spacing and defensive rotations. Teams are sagging and going under screens and daring them to shoot with bad 3point shooters like kobe and MWP(who seems to have a green light on offense). There is no room to operate..and dont get me started on the piss poor defense. Earl clark appears to be a gem though
Devin Dignam says:

January 24, 2013 at 3:38 pm

Ed,

What Andres meant to say is that, in the playoffs, only your top 6 tend to matter, not that teams shorten their rotations to 6 players.
Dave Berri talks Paying College Athletes, the Lakers, and many other topics in sports economics says:

January 31, 2013 at 8:10 am

[...] are the Lakers struggling? Andres Alvarez offered an answer in this forum a few days ago. And yesterday, this story appeared at the Atlantic.com: The Real Reason the Lakers [...]

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