Score: TOR 51 LAL 47
Alright so welcome in to the halftime report. A special game on NBA TV for the return of Kobe Bryant. However, the Raptors hold on to the lead in the 2nd half after a stunning fast start.
Onto the positives: too tough to highlight positives this game so far, but Nick Young and Xavier Henry off the bench. Both scored 9 points coming off the bench and Young and Henry made some buckets that brought the Lakers back to life. Overall, good defense is probably on the positive, despite how sloppy they looked offensively, their defense is letting them hang around, but only one particular area of that D I will be highly critical about in my negatives portion.
So my negatives, Pau Gasol and the interior D. From what I heard in the Lakers' commentators, that Pau is playing on an injured ankle. Gasol only tallied 6 points and 6 rebounds, but 3-9 shooting. I can understand that his jump shot is not 100% considering that bad ankle, but the offense has gotta find some way to get the ball on the inside to Pau for some easy buckets or better yet Pau has to try be more of a facilitator, try to get Kobe some shots to help boost some of that confidence for Kobe. The interior D is killing us right now, which is why we're in a hole early. Amir Johnson of the Raptors had 23 points on 10-13 shooting, most of his points were coming from the paint and considering we don't have a good interior D, we're making Amir Johnson look like a dominant low post player. Lakers have done a good job containing DeMar DeRozan and the Toronto's 3 point shooting, but they have to make them earn points in the paint now.
Overall, there's not too much to talk about after this half. The Lakers just got to keep hanging around and the Lakers got to get Kobe going while at the same time, monitoring how many minutes he plays in his first game back.
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