The Lakers played well last night, but it's no secret that the Lakers match up incredibly well with the Suns. They have Odom who is one of the few forwards that can keep up with Marion and abuse Marions poor man defense on the other end. They have Kwame (Now Bynum) who can take advantage of their INCREDIBLY small lineup. Luke Walton is tall enough to guard Diaw. Nash's shot was off but still managed to get 15 and 13... Bottom line is the Lakers allowed the Suns to shoot 51%, they were insanely hot and shot 55%. Sounds like the same team as last season if you ask me.
I think the difference is that the lakers came up with a plan for the playoffs and is working for them, its is 4-4 from last years playoffs compared to the 0-4 they had in the regular season.
The difference is that they dont run and gun with the suns, they attack the interior every time and dont try to match the suns trey for trey, knowing that they can chip away that lead two points at a time and threes are not the requirement. In that context they look to score in the paint and look for mismatches who ever it could be and that is the reason they shot 55%, i dont think the lakers can match that every night against any other team but I am confident they will repeat that against the suns atleast once again more season.
Every team in the league will have height advantage over the suns cos thats what the suns are, lets see if everyone else is able to do the same, lets see if Brad can take advandtage of that or Reef can take advantage of that, indidually they could but Muss should run a system that will take advantage of that and they should be able to run back every time down the floor on defense as well
Nash was forced many times because of some tight defense, i thought he had the basket everytime he was open, the only person whom I thought was missing open shots was Marion but Barbosa made up for it with his very hot shooting. Raja bell is a scrub who can be hot from three point line but very poor shooter in the mid range, he hit a few threes but struggled in the mid range and thats what the lakers gave him.
Lakers showed lots of different looks to Nash, full court pressure, show of full court pressure to get the ball of Nash's hands and then release to man to man, double team Nash on back court to get the ball of his hands and then man to man, they did lots of those things to keep them off balance. But mainly they scored pretty much every time they posted up and suns never recovered from that, their fast break was gone once the basket was made and barring a few open fast breaks they did a good job on fast break defense.
But anyways that wasnt the main point we were talking about how deep the lakers were
