Welcome in to the full recap of the Lakers' season opener vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves where the Lakers had all the makings of getting a W this game, but the T'Wolves were able to come from behind and steal a victory, beating the Lakers 112-111.
First off, congratulations to Minnesota Timberwolves organization and their fans out there. It was an emotional week in the basketball world as they honored the memory of Flip Saunders who passed away this past Sunday. Saunders meant a lot to the T'Wolves and kudos to them for fighting back and getting the win. It's a feel good story when something like that happens. Transitioning to the Lakers, a basketball game is played for 48 minutes and they started strong, but they just completely flopped in the 2nd half out there.
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Bench play. The good news is that the Lakers have a bench that can be relied upon to spare Kobe from logging heavy minutes. Lou Williams finished with 21 points on 6-14 shooting and Nick Young finished with 14 points on 5-8 shooting. These guys are going to provide quite a scoring tandem if they stay consistent in future games. I thought Lou had a good showing in his first regular season game as a Laker and he showed why he is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year. He had a good look at the game winning floater, but it just bounced off the rim. Nick Young didn't shoot the lights out at least, but he provided a highlight play of shooting from half court to end the first quarter. The bench earned a positive because of this scoring duo.
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Deferring to isolation on offense. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Lakers were moving the ball in the first half and that's one of the reasons why they had the lead for the majority of the game because that set up some high percentage shots. The Lakers shot 51% during that half and they finished with 37% shooting. What happened? They started doing more isolation and the Timberwolves just knew to double and triple team on defense. The offense won't be efficient if the ball doesn't move and they were just forcing up really bad shots in the 2nd half to try and respond to the T'Wolves' big run in the 2nd half.
2nd half defense. The defense is going to be a liability all season long, especially in the 2nd half. I looked at that defense out there and they looked gassed out there. No awareness, not hustling to the ball, letting some Timberwolves blow by them, and committing silly fouls that put the T'Wolves back in the game. That didn't show in the first half, but it was heavily exposed in the 2nd half big time. The Lakers' defense treated the 2nd half like it was just another practice session.
Conclusion
Short recap guys, I gotta wake up early tomorrow because I have an early start time for class. But, overall, it was a good game for the Lakers for two and a half quarters, but that was marred because of the way they gave this game away by settling with more bad shots and playing slow defense and that just turned from good to just plain bad. It is what it is though, I predicted the Lakers would not make the playoffs because the young talent has a lot of growing to do and Byron Scott and the coaching staff is not the answer to this team in the long run. It was nice to see Kobe Bryant turn back the clock this game, but he didn't save that magic until the 4th quarter. This game will hurt and will lessen the confidence of this young Laker team a bit. There will be a lot more growing pains to come as this season progresses. Well, I guess you can call this a one night stand for me covering a Laker game because I won't cover another televised game until they play the Warriors late in November. As usual since my blog's upbringing, the remaining non-televised Laker games will take the form of a quick recap. I'll see you guys until later in November for the game against the defending champions Warriors.
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