Yesterday at noon, when I sat in front of the computer and watched the Lakers lose to the Nuggets by 37 points, ushering in a wave of painful three-game losing streak, my heart was filled with grief.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Lakers fan, but I, who was responsible for writing today's WeChat headlines, understood at the time that the most thankless link came again: Why did the Lakers play badly this season, if you print out every article on the Internet discussing this matter, it may be thicker than the modern Chinese dictionary. But because of the heat of the game, I had to talk about this topic that everyone was talking about, and I had to talk about something new.
In our world of workers, nothing is easy. The way I sat in front of my computer and struggled to type on the keyboard was probably no different from the way Dwight Howard looked in the first quarter of the game on 5-of-6 shooting, and the result may be similar. Howard can only send complaints after the game, "The opponent rides on our neck to bully us, we must make changes", and I can only pick and choose in the readers' replies, paying attention not to the extreme lake honey that breaks the mouth, the extreme lake black that breaks the mouth and the message "How is it that you boy I just want to see old Yang".
Vogel was already changing, otherwise he wouldn't have sent Master Ho out against Jokic. Such a change had little effect, when Master Huo first played, those sets of Huo family punches were fierce, and they also made the opposite Slavic Hercules suffer several times, but the people did not talk about martial virtue at all, and after running in the air, they misplaced the small one of the Lakers, and Master Huo, who was not agile in his legs and feet, could only stare dryly. By the second half, Vogel didn't dare to use him anymore.
This is the main reason why the Lakers have always used small lineups before: the core of the big lineup is to slow down the game and play defensively, but as long as you glance at the list of personnel of this 2K15 fantasy team, you can see that even if they are on the traditional center, they can't defend 70% of the team in the league. Instead of being passively beaten all the time, it is better to simply take down the center and attack head-to-head. So most of the Lakers' game scenes resemble two idiots slapping each other until one side fanned the other down.
It is said that two days ago, during training before the Lakers flew to Denver, they had a special meeting because of their poor defense in the past two losses, and Vogel called it "a fierce video lesson" in which he "criticized everyone who made a mistake by name." But in terms of this ball, this video lesson didn't play a role — you can see that the Nuggets shot 23 of 40 three-pointers to know that they fanned the Lakers.
By the way, the big lineup has defense, and the small lineup has no defense, which is also a stereotype. Just a few days ago, the Nuggets were overturned by the Lakers' neighbor, the Clippers, with a 25-point lead. The Clippers' two interior players, Zubac and Ibaka, played 31 minutes combined, killing the Nuggets alive with a small lineup, and the Nuggets shot 4-of-33 from three-point range, matching yesterday's game. The last time James lost 37 points in a game goes back to 2019, when the Lakers were bloodied by the Pacers on the road that night and Indiana fans chanted "LeBron will trade you" during Ingram's free throw. A few days later, rumors spread in the league that the Lakers were discussing the Davis deal with the Pelicans.
Since this style of play has been chosen, the Lakers certainly have a time to fan win the opposite side. Last week they won four straight games with a small squad. When Vogel put Howard and Jordan Jr. on the shelf, played back to the one-star system that we couldn't be more familiar with, or treated James like a lean boy, Anthony, Munch, Avery Bradley, and Austin Rivers suddenly found their place and began to shine. James is really in good shape, which will make him the second in the league's scoring list, averaging 28+7+6 per game, and it is possible to win the All-Star vote again, but he is 38 years old after all, and you can't ask him for it as much as he did when he was 24.
The most talked about basketball program "Bing with the Ball" upgraded and returned
The airtime has now been changed to 18:00 every Monday evening
When James was 24 years old, with a few blue-collar workers and shooters, he could win 66 in the regular season and kill all the way to the East Finals, but when he was 37 years old, you let him play like this, it could only be abused - since the thick eyebrow injury, the Lakers have never won a team with a winning rate of more than 50% this season, and recently against the Grizzlies and Nuggets, they have not been able to extend the suspense of victory and defeat to the fourth quarter, which can be called "shattered at a touch".
Is It Up to James? Apparently not. I've seen a lot of people cut off some of James' games and GIFs mocking him, but that's the price you have to pay for a 37-year-old athlete to hit a star. If you're going to use James that way, you've got to accept that he sometimes walks on the defensive end, sometimes forks at the top of the arc, sometimes he can't single-handedly beat Davin Reid, who got the Nuggets from the Peach Orchard Pilot Ape.
But this is not James' problem, and we should not be too harsh on him. The Logic of the Lakers is this: the big lineup can't attack and defend (28 points by the Spurs), so it can only play a small lineup, at least the offense can be abusive; as long as the small lineup is played, it will all have to point at James. James can stand up, and the Lakers may not win, but if he falls down this time, the Lakers will definitely lie down. If you want to win this road, the Lakers and James have no other choice.
It's not just his problem, it's also a problem with the quality of the role players. But a team with a Big Three accounting for 75% of the total salary is unlikely to have more quality role players. If the team can't win, you shouldn't blame the low-salary players, you have to look for problems with the giants first.
As "Guess the Train" says, life is one choice after another. The Lakers and James don't have a choice right now, just because they chose Westbrook last summer. It took Vogel three months to try the team rotation over and over again, and came to some very instructive stage conclusions: Howard and West can't get along, Jordan Jr. and West can't get along, Rondo and West can't get together, Horton Tucker and West can't get along, and James doesn't look like he can't ride with Westbrook. When these are understood, these conclusions suddenly lose their meaning: it is no longer a question of who to play with, before this game against the Nuggets, the Lakers' last eight losses, Westbrook's shooting percentage was 39.1%, and his three-point shooting rate was 15%. In the Lakers' recent James 1.0 basketball, he played a role not as a shooter but as a blue-collar worker, who worked closer to Drew Gooden than Mo Williams. Not only me, sometimes the Lakers' opponents will understand the role of Westbrook in this game against the Nuggets, the Nuggets used Aaron Gordon against Westbrook, and the results were very good.
There are a lot of Lakers fans who have been fooled by Westbrook's performance this season. But people who have watched last season's Wizards ball understand that Westbrook's season is actually not much worse than last season, and his data decline is actually just a reduction in his ball. He was still the same teenager he was before, and there was no change in the slightest, but the way people looked at him was different. Take the Nuggets as an example, if it were not for the Lakers, Westbrook's 19 points and 5 rebounds, 7 of 15 games are ok, but in the Lakers, after the game, some people will blame the two empty baskets he lost in the second quarter for letting the Nuggets fight back, which led to a collapse in the scene.
The spotlight was a blessing, and Westbrook hadn't had time to shout wait. Throughout Westbrook's career, his 43.8 percent shooting percentage and 29.1 percent three-point shooting percentage this season are similar to career averages (43.7 percent shooting and 30.5 percent three-minute shooting). As a scorer who has shot a lot of shots throughout his career but is extremely unstable, a player whose mistakes have shocked gu Shuojin, he can still grab rebounds and assists for the team, and he has been quite cautious in his shooting choices. He's played as wisely as he can with the team, and if Thick Brow returns healthy, he doesn't look completely without the potential to be a title-contending team's three-man. But throughout his career, he was originally a controversial athlete, even at the peak of his career, it is difficult to call him efficient or intelligent. You can't ask him for something he doesn't have. He can now be sprayed on Weibo hot search first, the essence is because of the huge attention brought by the Lakers traffic, and this attention from all over the world has also caused him great pressure.
When stressed, some people will be motivated, while others will choose to lie flat and swing. What kind of person is Wei Shao? I will read out here an interview he gave the day before yesterday.
"You ask me after I don't regret being traded back to Los Angeles?" Of course not. Every one of you thinks basketball is the ultimate goal, but it's not. I'm back in Los Angeles now and I'm especially happy because it means I can see my kids every day, my family, my parents, and that's a lot more important than anything. I can hug them every day and they can see me every day. I can send them to school every day and watch them grow up. No matter what happened, it always made me have a smile on my face. For me, there are some things that are more important than basketball. I wouldn't regret coming back here. ”
His hands are hard when he shoots, his head is hard when he breaks through, and his mouth is also hard when he finishes the game. Such a strong Wei Shao does not need to be endorsed by an internationally renowned sports brand to make his wife praise him as a champion of life, and it seems that he is now enjoying the joy of heaven and has completed the great harmony of life.
He may not really regret it, but now there must be others who have already regretted it, such as those who were just named by the magician on Twitter yesterday, and people who were not named but seemed to be connotated: "As Lakers fans, we can accept being beaten, but we don't accept that this team does not work hard and has no sense of urgency." 」 @Jenny Bass, you deserve better. ”
James, who didn't give a media interview after the loss, probably knew that someone would ask him questions about the magician's Twitter, and that would be a difficult question to answer — because we all know that the magician was right.