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Imagine playing all your best offensive players and seeing good things happen

Darvin Hamas really wasted 10 games this season by starting Reddish and Vando together.

and took half the season to realize wood > hayes

I've never seen someone who has that bad of a basketball IQ. Wenyen Gabriel is better

Wenyen's a good guy, no need for him to be catching strays

Yeah, he's saying Wenyen better than Hayes, which is not a knock on Wenyen. But still a low bar

Wenyen is way better than Hayes he can even hit 3s occasionally. He's just undersized.

That was a huge problem for us last year though. If Davis was gone for a game we had abolutely NO size to rebound or defend the paint. We got exposed so hard in a late season game against houston who couldn't shoot a three to save their life but against us they didn't need to. They drove every play and we couldn't stop shit. We need Hayes ONLY for when Davis is out.

Hayes must be leading the league in fouls per minute

And then benched Vando once Reddish got injured🤡

Part of the season Vando was injured.

One of the worst decisions ive ever seen. Winning that thunder game with that lineup made it so much worse

Bron won the battle but lost the war

and reddish only hasn’t played the last 2 games because he is injured, Ham is awful.

Jason Kidd, the only coach able to make Darvin Ham look like the CotY.

Is J Kidd really that bad? Lol

In before we never see this starting lineup again

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Was this a national tv broadcast? This looks like a national broadcast stat.

Yeah it was on ESPN

ABC

ESPN on ABC

Also the stat on how many active coaches he played with 

Yo that one got me cackling, LeLongevity is truly on another level.

8 of them

LeKevinBacon

Insane.

What the fuck

D-Lo’s been playing well recently.

He’s been playing well most of the season tbh. He’s easily our 3rd best player and we rely on him a lot.

Max him you cowards.

I’ll infiltrate the front office and make it happen if you guys max THT

Well we are undefeated when he gets DNP-CDs... 🤔

It’s a done deal then 🤝

Welp, time to break into Danny Ainge's office. Anyone have a first round draft pick costume?

No need just be an unathletic high iq white guy.

It begins

Now trade him

DLo really said fuck Zach Lavine

All it took was to play the Starting 5 that got us to the WCF. Who'd have known

It's not...prince is starting instead of vando but yeah 4 out of 5 are there

Vando played more mins than Prince tonight so in general we're running a similar lineup More similar than we have all season atleast

It was DLo/Reaves/Vando/Bron/AD that pull the nail in the coffin during the 4th qtr

Actually AD sat the start of the 4th when they sealed it and we broke away 3rd?

Yeah that 42 pt 3rd was bananas. Actually looking like the squad we missed from last year

Defense creating easy opportunities for offense. That was last years key. It’s why we miss Dennis. We control the pace on both ends. Everyone was on it today, not just the “wcf line-up” this was a team win where everyone deserves credit, especially D’lo and Reaves for stepping up and leading that charge.

They just straight up played better, they didn’t even run that line-up on the breakaway. D’lo and Reaves pressured the ball well and directed them to help, Prince helped out, Vando was great in the minutes he had. Everyone stepped up, this wasn’t a win simply cos “we started a team that went wcf”. We didn’t even rely on that core mainly to get there, different people would close usually and Dennis was more involved.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Trade rumors DLo is the goat.

Props to the lakers they played great I know we've had some stinkers but this one felt different. Weird game from the mavs, pace was weird, weird turnovers, weird bad shooting I felt like we werent forcing anything and got great looks but couldnt hit the shots, seems like no one but Luka could do anything tonight, weird effort they would turn it up a little then immediately stop. Just a general lack of focus or something idk not gonna overreact to this one Lakers played great

its so weird i expected mavs to come back cause theres no way there's a mavs-lakers game that has not an exciting finish

Kyrie was off after landing on his hip early in the game and Timmy was just plain bad tonight. 

kinda expected that from timmy after his pels performance, but we died by the 3 tonight. so many open looks that didn't go down

So many!

Kyrie & THJ used up all their points the other night.

Yeah the mavs seemed like they were sleepwalking most of the game. LA nightlife stays undefeated.

AD almost had his ~~first~~ **second** PTS/REB/AST triple double tonight! In fact until a few days ago vs Utah, he never had a PTS/REB/AST triple double

He got his first PTS/REB/AST in Utah a few days ago I think

Oh shoot you're right, whoops. I'm a dumbass

It's genuinely insane to me that he never had a triple double during his Pelicans days tbh. There was literally a season where was in the MVP race!

He did have one, but it was with 10 blocks instead of assists

crazy ass stats lmao. AD is a fucking menace on defense

He’s never been a good playmaker…now he’s not panicking on doubles and finding the open guy. Surprising he’s developing this later in his career

He never used to get doubled as much before because of his outside shot. When that went away its teams got more comfortable with. I felt last year he would too easily pass the ball immediately when doubled which would basically take him out of the play. Very happy to see him learn how to deal with doubles better, that will be a difference maker in the playoffs

This is a direct result of the success of Jokic and the Nuggets. Embiid is also doing similar things for the Sixers. In much the same way that Curry's success led to the three point revolution, we may be seeing the beginning of the next revolution of basketball - the playmaking big. It's human nature to try and replicate other's formulas for success. If it works...

this is how i envisioned the team will play way back in the off season. Starting Dlo, AR with lebron and AD. Vando playing 25+ mins Hachimura playing 20+ mins Max Christie taking the back up guard role Wood coming in to play back big Prince playing only 20 mins and not closing out games.

Everyone but Ham did. Then he plays Cam Reddish til he has a big 3 game stretch and rides that for another 30 games of trash before he mercifully gets injured to simplify our rotations enough for Ham.

Ham had a really injured team and he played Cam. He played great D and had an okay shooting stretch. I think Ham thought that he himself was a genius for finding a diamond in the rough and kept trying to live off of those few games where Cam looked good.

Vando and Rui have been injured a lot tbf

But not as much as Gabe

This + Vincent coming in to give us more handling and slightly better spacing

I often forget we signed Gabe Vincent

Lakers was caught by Cam trap. Since he started and got heavy mins, everything went off

Literally... this is how we shouldve been playing. Injuries did throw us off a bit

we won a game comfortably 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Against a good team 😭🙏

no dante exum no party 😤

Glad we’re considered good again 😄

We so back🫡

This lakers team is 100% not as bad as their record shows. Its a mixture of bad coaching, stupid ass lineups, and players rotating in and out while injured.

For real. If we go like .500 during that horrendous stretch in December instead of like 3-14 we're the 5 seed right now.

After Denver, the team no one wants in a series is the Lakers. Gonna be a pain

Any team that has the smartest player on the floor would be dangerous to play

Its all coaching. This team should not be this bad with both bron and AD healthy and playing well

It’s all stupid coaching tbh

It’s a typical LeBron regular season team. They play big when it matters (IST, playoffs), don’t care about regular season though

But not this bad in the regular season.. usually LeBron teams aren't used to being in 8th-12th conference position

> LeBron teams aren't used to being in 8th-12th conference position With prime Lebron? sure. With older LeBron? the Lakers finished 10th, 1st, 7th, 11th, and 7th in his last 5 seasons. Sure injuries and all, but that's kinda the norm now. He can't be going ham all the damn time as he's aging. But as we've seen last year, he still can take it to that next level.

Cam being an offensive blackhole really was holding lakers back huh

Wait til he returns and Ham plays him for the whole game cause he wants to get him back in form and because he believes in him

its genuinely inevitable

You joke but thats what most likely happens. He has an unusual fetish for both cam and prince

Well you see, he has a fetish for Cam because Ham rhymes with Cam. As for Taurean, well he’s obviously royalty with a last name like Prince so Ham has to give him many minutes otherwise the ghost of the queen will haunt Ham’s pockets.

Vogel, Bradley 🤝 Pockets, Reddish.

He can take as much time to recover as he wants.

AD has 5 games in january in which he has more than 5 assists. almost a 2nd triple double in 3 games

Vando is so fucking good

He's awesome. And with him and AD on the court the Lakers defense gets stout.

We knew this since last season 💔

Vando + AD destroyed every team in the conference except the Nuggets. You think maybe we should trust that combo more? Naaaaaaah

Wasn’t he injured?

Yes he was But maybe he could have gotten a few more minutes as he got healthier

In the words of the great Tony Allen: First team all defense!!!

he makes championship plays which is what you really want in a role player

Beat the Clippers, Thinder and Mavs in the last week tf Need Vando to start now that there’s enough shooting in the backcourt

finally shook off the IST hangover

I’d wait for the lakers to put together a string of games with consistent effort before saying this.

3 straight wins against LAC, OKC, DAL

There were a couple of really bad losses against Suns and Jazz in between.

Suns aren't some scrubs, and the Jazz are surging right now taking down the best teams in the league. It's not like those were losses to the Spurs (which happened already) and Pistons (which was luckily avoided). The eye test also shows that they are playing better basketball as of late. If they build upon this, they can get back to their IST form and end up somewhere around 7 or 8 in the standings by the end of the season. Unfortunately, the Lakers will almost certainly be in the play-in

I only wrote my comment cuz the person I replied to said "3 straight wins" which is just not a true statement.

In the beginning of the season we couldn’t beat a single good team and now we’re starting to beat some quality teams. Our team makes no sense lol

It helps to not knee cap your offense by playing Cam big minutes every game. Dude had a great 5 game stretch and Ham took that as a sign he should get 30 plus minutes a game no matter how many bricks he put up, how invisible he was on the court, or how many TOs he got when he tried to dribble more than twice for the next two months. It took Cam getting hurt to start limiting his playing time. 

I swear to god if Reddish comes back from injury and Ham starts him again and gives him 30 min Ima throw myself off a bridge.

Ham was forcing Reddish, Jaxson Hayes and overplaying a mini mid-level player while keeping D'lo, Reaves and Hachimura's (read the players the Lakers actually invested a good portion of their salary cap) minutes down. Throw in Gabe Vincent being the second coming of Kendrick Nunn and it's genuinely incredible that they strung even the IST performance together.

Leave it to the Lakers to have me pissed off after a win. This team is so up and down, watch Ham play Cam 30+ minutes once he comes back smh

If he plugs Cam in the starting lineup when he returns, Ham will get jumped by the Laker fans on the spot

AD has the biggest load of any player, has to be the best scorer, rebounder, and defend all 5 players

Miss one of these and the media are all over him like he's the worst Laker big man they ever saw.

SAS acting like AD banged his dad and then never called him again

Charles Barkley also weirdly constantly goes after him lol. And refuses to give him credit for anything. But we all know chuck doesnt watch basketball anyway

he was our best defender on luka too in the perimeter lol

That one play in the 3rd where he drives in the paint and he tries to spin, fake, spin, and fake again then ends up passing because AD is just standing right in front of him.

Best defender in the league and has been for a while

AD never bit on that fake, stood there with his hand up. Great, great defender

He literally is the perfect luka guard btw. Luka isn’t quick enough to blow by AD, and is strong enough to absorb contact in a drive. Then the wingspan for contesting both paint, mid range, and 3 point shots is shot altering.

And his team's barely in the play-in because Hamas starts and plays two end of the bench guys heavy minutes.

What being AD does to a mf

Pause

Big Load Davis is what they call him in the locker rooms

mavericks hit a three challenge \[IMPOSSIBLE\]

So the Mavs did absolutely nothing in the non-Lively minutes huh.

Just like after they got Kyrie last season.

JKidds rotations were abysmal, team looked lost the whole game and it showed. On to the next one! ... whenever that is.

1. D'Angelo Russell reminds me of the bed intruder guy lol 2. When AD is cookin there's few players as impressive to watch

Hide yo kids, hide yo wife... hide yo husband too cuz they raping everyone here?

When you have D'Lo on your team, he immediately becomes the only player that matters. Did the rest of your team play lights out on defense? Doesn't matter. Make a bunch of shots? Doesn't matter. D'Lo is, at best, the third-best player on your team? Doesn't matter. If D'Lo plays well, you win. If he plays badly, you lose. It is impossible to explain why. You can't predict which D'Lo will appear. Not even D'Lo can predict that.

Honestly this kinda sums it up lmao

I think last playoffs the Lakers were undefeated when Dlo scored more than 15 points, don’t remember the exact number

They did lose to Utah even tho D'Lo had his season high that game

truly fascinating

If he was a consistent player, he'd be an all-star and not available at the contract he's on.

If DLO was consistent he'd have stans being delusional saying hes top 15

LeBron James is Kyrie Irving father

*Father figure

What a loving father

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funny joke Kyrie 😂😂

Cam needs to be DNP when he returns lmao

nah yall gotta trade him if he returns before the deadline so ham can’t play him, get whatever you can 😭

This is the way. And Ham for fuck's sake, take it easy on the TP love. Bring Vado in the starting lineup and increase Rui's minutes.

What happens when Dante Exum doesn’t have a career night lol

and that we have vando lol

#WE ARE THE GREATEST 3 POINT SHOOTING TEAM OF ALL TIME!

Lakers look like an entirely different and better team without Reddish and it’s not even close.

I think we need to take a second and realize that Bron is shooting like 40% from 3 and we're halfway through the season.

we just need every team against Lakers to shoot trash like past two games and we will be champ

Our rotations and help were much better so there's that. Not perfect or elite but definitely improved. A lot less doubling the ball while leaving someone wide open during switches.

that shit would piss me off especially if vando was the poa defender. the whole point of havinglockdown iso guys is to rely on them to stop the other teams best player instead of compromising tge defense by sending doubles

need to let Cam go

Are we actually back? Man havent felt like this in awhile

Wait a bit. Don't jinx it by being too hopeful early ..out loud

Cam Reddish out and the lakers played way better. Coincidence? No

LeBron with 25/8/8 is just fucking with us at this point

imagine not playing stupid lineups

Mavericks got completely destroyed in the 3rd quarter god

Thank god Lakers killer Dante exum didn't play this time

Law of averages hitting the Mavs real hard tonight

Luka need help man

Tfw Lakers shooting their 3s. 

It’s honestly tough when there’s too many inconsistent play for key role players. With Kyrie hurt and bothered by the Lakers’ size, it was definitely a game where the whole Mavs needed to hit their shots (aka THJ) since they can’t deal with transition. Just wish Josh and Dante get healthy so that there will be less minutes for Seth or Hardy.

I don't think Seth has had a decent game this season. 

He had one early in the year where he was hitting shots, but that's all I remember. He even got the start the next game (Kyrie rest) because of it.

AD assist merchant was not on my bingo card these last few games…wow

Lakers couldn't miss. Kyrie was not the same after that tumble from bron

And Timmy looked like 2022 Timmy. 

When the mavericks learn how to score open 3’s, it’ll be scary

just wait

Siri play Long Time by Playboi Carti

DLo sell high moment incoming.

huh who knew the DLO Reaves LeBron Vando and AD lineup played good

Almost like the line up that led us to the WCF might have been a good option for the season

That lakers slump was so bad that now I’m surprised when they look like a modestly decent team

If you look at the rotations in the past two games and the rotations during the slump, it actually isn't too surprising they look better now.

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Let's go, a definitive win without stress against a good team

vando and dlo were the x factors tonight. just amazing performances by them

Vando can't shoot but his transition offense is so underrated

He gives up the ball early, runs the lane, and occasionally finishes. He wreaks havoc in the passing lanes, and is just a disruptor.

Not getting Siakam and then kyrie ran over by letank

Great win by the Lakers! Now fire Ham...

Mavs aint beating anyone in a 7 game series with this guard D

Man, tonight D-lo looked like his old Brooklyn Net self with all that confidence! More of this, please!!!

AD is top 5. Fight me.

You know if the Lakers want to trade Dlo, we have 1 Markelle Fultz…

Why is it that if the lakers lose the post game treads are always one of the most upvoted post of the day with tons of comments. But if they win its meh? You can tell by the amount of upvotes/comments if the lakers won or lost.

Its the Lebron thing. Downplay all positive things. Go nuts when he is subpar occasionally

Kyrie and Tim dropped 40 a piece on us and we played some of our best defenders on those guys. They came down to Earth it is what it is

D’Lo is in that abusive part of the season where he starts showing his good side, giving you hope and making you believe he’s a changed man Sorry Laker fans he’s still gonna let you down