Lakers – Cleaning Up The Glass

The Lakers Trade Deadline, How Good Teams Fight, and My Tweets With Scot Pollard

What? I’ve got a lot of stuff to cover.

October 21, 2018 – LeBron James makes his Hollywood debut, but it was overshadowed by a rumble- of sorts -when Rajon Rondo popped Chris Paul in the mouth for being Chris Paul. Both players were suspended, as was Lakers teammate Brandon Ingram, who, having observed Paul’s violent reaction to being sucker punched, inserted himself into the altercation to defend his teammate. A teammate he had known for all of one month.

That seems so long ago now.

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Think Big

The Los Angeles Lakers have a potential “Death Lineup” at their disposal, but will they use it?

This season, the Lakers signed superstar LeBron James to join their young core in Los Angeles. The current team has an average age of 26.3 years, good for middle of the league. Although they are third in the league in points per game, and sit at fourth in pace, the team has so far been plagued by poor effort on defense and defensive rebounding. They sit at 27th in opponent points per game, 24th in opponent field goal percentage, and 22nd in overall defensive rating. A huge contributing factor in this is the team places 27th in opponent offensive rebounds per game, and 22nd in opponent second-chance points.

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Nostra-Dan-us’ Way Too Early NBA Playoff Predictions

… or “How the Golden State Warriors Will Win the 2019 NBA Finals”

If you spend your free time like I do this time of year, skimming through the internet searching for NBA news, you’ve probably run across a few “regular season predictions”. You may have even seen a few posts on Twitter with someone’s “end of season award predictions”.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The NBA is insanely easy to predict. It’s even easier when you understand which story-lines the league wishes to see, and what is within the realm of possibility for them to orchestrate.

The Golden State Warriors will be your 2019 NBA Champions. Kevin Durant will join Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal as a Three-Peat NBA Finals MVP. Everyone knows that. But how will we arrive at that conclusion? More importantly, when the outcome is already predetermined, does anyone even care anymore? (I hope so, I have a lot of writing to do).

Follow me, reader, as I, Nostra-Dan-us, gaze deep into my crystal ball. Deep, past the end of the regular season and all of those other prediction posts you have read. All the way to the NBA Finals!

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Underrated: Get To Know Your Logo

Some say we need to change the NBA logo to a more current player. It’s apparent we all need a reminder of how great a player Jerry West was.

When you’re a member of the NBA’s Top 50 Players Ever, inside the top thirty players on the All-Time Scoring list, and the logo of the league, it’s almost baffling to say you’re underrated. But, in a basketball world suddenly concerned with how many championships a player has won in their career, Jerry West’s game gets forgotten.

A common argument from younger basketball fans is:

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How LeBron James Fits Within the Lakers Cosmos

Lakers fans are unsurprisingly split on their feelings regarding the team’s decision to sign the best player in the NBA. Here’s why every Lakers fan should be excited

I was born in 1984. The same year that Magic Johnson lost his first meeting with Larry Bird and the hated Boston Celtics, teaching a whole new generation of Lakers fans to hate the color green and Lucky Charms cereal. As a Lakers fan, I grew up watching a team with no stars. The year was 1993, two years after saying good-bye to Magic Johnson who retired in 1991, and the Lakers would draft Nick Van Exel with the 37th selection in the NBA draft. The team would later select Eddie Jones in the 1994 draft, complete a trade for Cedric Ceballos, and make the playoffs with one of the younger cores in the league at the time. It would take one more season before the Lakers signed superstar center Shaquille O’Neal to pair with the young but talented roster already in place, and trade for another young talent from the 1996 draft class in Kobe Bryant.

As a Lakers fan, I would go on to enjoy three straight NBA championships, and be reminded that this is what the Lakers did. They would draft well, they would make all of the right moves (GM Jerry West also traded away a few assets to clear up cap space and ensure O’Neal could be signed), and they won championships. Going back to the days of Magic Johnson, the trades for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the addition of James Worthy proved this was evident. Going back even further to the days of Jerry West, the trade for Wilt Chamberlain proved this was evident. Fans of other teams often mock Lakers fans for bringing up their team’s history, but when your history continues to repeat itself, it’s hard not to keep bringing it up to the uneducated masses.

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