Treading Water - Lakers@Wolves GDT

[60WinTim]

Lakers have 50 points with 7 minutes left in the half. Pathetic!

Yup. Pretty short stints by Tyus and Bazz, although I wouldn't pin the poor defense on just them...

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Lakers have 50 points with 7 minutes left in the half. Pathetic!

Yup. Pretty short stints by Tyus and Bazz, although I wouldn't pin the poor defense on just them...

It's the whole team really.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

OK, the Lakers are making some shots too. Jeebus, Randle now can suddenly hit 3's!? When did that happen?

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Love how disruptive Dunn is out there defensively. Interesting how with Rubio's shooting, suddenly playing the two together for long stretches kinda works. That's two pair of quick hands out their in the back court.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

However....Dunn's decision making with the ball....just wow sometimes. It's really hard envisioning him as a full-time PG at this level.

[TeamRicky [enjin:6648771]]

As much as I want to believe Rubio has figured it all out the change was so sudden and so dramatic that I just can't get over feeling like it's just a mirage. At this point I would have expected pigs to fly before Rubio became even a competent shooter, much less a true threat.

Somebody pinch me.

I think it's a combination of both being hot and some legit improvement picking up where he left off last season. Go back and look at his TS% last season vs. the first few years of his career - it was a career high. I think the fact he started off the year so tentative and so cold somehow made people forget that he wasn't THAT terrible before.

Benz and Peterson keep mentioning Ricky's elbow injury as to why Ricky's shooting was sub par earlier in the year. Maybe the outlier was the early part of the season not now.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

I agree that the defense has been terrible recently, but what an entertaining half if you enjoy offensive basketball...kind of like an All Star game! Ricky with 20-6-3-2 and only 1 TO! Tyus with 3 assists in just 5 minutes and Dunn with 4 steals! What did Bazz do to get the early hook? I get a funny feeling he's in Thibs' dog house.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

As much as I want to believe Rubio has figured it all out the change was so sudden and so dramatic that I just can't get over feeling like it's just a mirage. At this point I would have expected pigs to fly before Rubio became even a competent shooter, much less a true threat.

Somebody pinch me.

I think it's a combination of both being hot and some legit improvement picking up where he left off last season. Go back and look at his TS% last season vs. the first few years of his career - it was a career high. I think the fact he started off the year so tentative and so cold somehow made people forget that he wasn't THAT terrible before.

Benz and Peterson keep mentioning Ricky's elbow injury as to why Ricky's shooting was sub par earlier in the year. Maybe the outlier was the early part of the season not now.

I think it was that and the fact he just wasn't very involved in the offense early on. Thibs was doing a bunch more point-Wiggins stuff and 2-man game with LaVine and Dieng, with Rubio simply being the guy that brought the ball up the court. And when he did run plays, he just wasn't comfortable and his confidence was shot.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I agree that the defense has been terrible recently, but what an entertaining half if you enjoy offensive basketball...kind of like an All Star game! Ricky with 20-6-3-2 and only 1 TO! Tyus with 3 assists in just 5 minutes and Dunn with 4 steals! What did Bazz do to get the early hook? I get a funny feeling he's in Thibs' dog house.

Dunn is just incredible with the amount of deflections he gets. I honestly believe he has DPOY potential - just give it a few more years. I mean, he's a halfway decent weak side shot blocker as a freakin' guard!

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

Rubio's jumper off the dribble still looks a little flat to me. He's just making them now. That's why I'm not completely convinced he has suddenly turned into this lights-out shooter. It still looks a little like a push-shot.

But as many of us have said all along, he doesn't need to be a lights-out shooter. He just needs to be a guy that can't be totally ignored. You certainly can't ignore him tonight!