11/02: LAKERS @ Portland Trail Blazers 1st Half Open Thread and Discussion

Welcome to the first half open thread discussion of the Lakers' road matchup vs. the Portland Trail Blazers. Leave a comment below the post and share your thoughts on the game.

Q2

LAL 62 POR 66

This current turnaround by the Lakers in this quarter is textbook example of a tale of two quarters in the first half. In the start, they looked lethargic. Lillard and McCollum were picking their spots against the defense and providing some pretty good balance between scoring and facilitating the basketball. This quarter, the Lakers got back to the basics that worked for them in Detroit: attacking the basket and generating some better energy on defense. The stat that TNT provided so far tonight, the Blazers shot over 60% in the 1st quarter. In the 2nd quarter, they shot 40% from the field. The Lakers picked up the defensive intensity this quarter. In terms of attacking the basket, they fed the ball inside to Brook Lopez and Lopez just took it to Nurkic in the paint. B.I. also picked up his penetration to the rim before the end of the quarter. That's the Lakers' game right now. It's old school drive to the basket, dominate the paint, and play good team defense. They have to sustain that formula if they want to end 10+ games of misery against Portland. On another note, Lonzo Ball has been pedestrian this first half  The Lakers are much better when he's aggressive and pushing the tempo. We have to see better energy from Zo in the 2nd half. Open thread of the 2nd half will open up shortly.

Q1

LAL 25 POR 41

The Lakers can throw all of their defensive sets on Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum and it still wouldn't matter. Those two were just surgically picking apart the Lakers' defense in that quarter. It's also backbreaking that McCollum was making those other-worldy shots on three. The only positive from this quarter was Kyle Kuzma's mini-run about four minutes left in the 1st. He got aggressive early on and cut the deficit to as many as six. But, other than that, Lakers still have no answer for Dame and C.J.