kobe all day,all night,for the rest of time,ballin

Does that count as a missed FG for Kobe?

Needing the starters come back in the 4th when there was a 25 point lead at the start of the 4th is exactly what I meant by the bench players not caring.

Garbage time or not, it’s still a game, there are players on the opposite side that won’t just fold because they’re down by 25.

My problem with the bench is they don’t treat garbage time as a time for them to get better, execute the offense, or do anything remotely productive. Last game, the game before that, they kept giving away the lead. I know it’s garbage time and thus “meaningless” but if bad habits are being built during garbage time (ie like not passing to Drew when he’s fought for a good position) it’s just building for big epic lead-fails like tonight.

These problems, if they persist throughout the season, will play out exactly like they did in the playoffs last year. We only survived through the playoffs because our starters were THAT much better than everyone else’s starters. But I’m pretty sure we all facepalmed more than once when we saw the bench give up multiple leads in the 4th quarter when the starters SHOULD have been resting.

Again, I may be too harsh on the bench and overreacting, but I do believe if players play “knowing” it’s garbage time, it’ll show in their body language, their lack of hustle, their bad decisions, etc. And when it comes to important playing time, all the mistakes they make during garbage time, will definitely carry over.

Who’s going to be on the court at the end when the Lakers start having close games? Someone’s going to feel left out.

It’s just aggravated this season because our entire backcourt with the exception of Fisher has forgotten how to shoot from distance. In garbage time, teams can just clog the paint and watch as Farmar/Brown/Morrison/Vujacic/Odom/etc. throw up bricks. The lack of intensity doesn’t help either; same with the stat-filling behavior that most of this group exhibits in garbage time. I could see it being less of a problem in close games given that there will be enough starters to counterbalance the reserves and keep them in line, but it would be nice for the long-term health of our starters if they didn’t have to close games.

The problem is that fixing this using external methods (signing/trading a player) is difficult because of the options available, which is essentially Jerry Stackhouse and Wally Szczerbiak, both of whom aren’t exactly panaceas, but Stackhouse can score and Szczerbiak can shoot, so it would be helpful. Trading implies using Morrison’s contract and possibly Farmar, but the question is whether Buss wants to take on any money with the huge payroll he’s opening his wallet up for now. The other method is hope that this resolves itself internally as the season goes on, but given how long this has been a problem, it’s doubtful it will ever fully go away.

luckily I did catch the fourth quarter on the radio so, if it were up to me alone, the Lakers lost this game :P

This makes me kind of sick……….

Our 6 starters (if you are a Laker fan you get that) have a net +/- per 48 minutes of +12.217
Our 7 bench players have a net +/- per 48 minutes of -9.4.

That’s a differential of 21.6 points!!!!

That’s just disgusting! Of course the bench is playing weaker competition most of the time. Our starters are playing great, but this has to change.

For reference the Celtics starters are +8.4666 and their bench is +8.1666 which is a minuscule difference of .3 points.

Just imagine if our bench was a net “zero”? We would be killing every team.

our bench keeps blowing leads…
we need to get rid of sasha at the end of this season
if he keeps shooting poorly