Game Thread | 2021-2022 Season | Game #72 | Lakers @ Cavs | March 21, 2022 | 7:00 p.m.

InBoobieWeTrust said:

Bro you are talking CRAZY right now.

You dont see how this roster becomes good enough to contend when our best 3 players are all 23 or under, we have no bad contracts, a ton of monetary and cap flexibility and own every single pick after this upcoming draft????

I mean I could have the LBJ dicsussion or whatever but saying this roster cant become good enough to contend without him makes you sound ridiculous.

The Cavs are 10 games above .500 with 10 games to go. They are going to end the year at least 4-6 games above .500 after being the 5th worst team in the league last year.

Tonight sucked. We have struggled defensively for about 4-6 weeks...but this has been a wildly successful year and we have one of the brightest futures in the entire league by far.

LeBron obviously got up extra for us tonight. No surprise. Their role guys shoot like that 1 out of like every 10 games. Even wide open like they were tonight...the Lakers usually fucking suck.

Yeah tonight sucked. But you are so wrong about this team going forward.

Click to expand...

With JBB as coach for the foreseeable future. And knowing that we’ll probably extend LeVert and re-sign Sexton. I become a lot less optimistic about this team’s future despite how good our core three are. If Koby realizes the issues and lets LeVert be a sunk cost and moves on, signs and trades Sexton for whatever we can get, and gets some real talent at the 2/3, I’ll eat my words. But right now it’s pretty clear to me Lauri in the starting lineup isn’t cutting it and Okoro isn’t either unless he makes a big jump next year. And JBB is just incompetent and I’ve given up on him, but at least Gilbert has never had a problem sacking coaches with years left on their contract.

InBoobieWeTrust said:

Nah, hes a good player that is being criminally misused and coming off of injury and we traded 1 first round pick and 1 2nd round pick. He has enough value to recoup 90% of what we traded if we really need to down the road. The overreaction about a dude who played like 6 games, and is now on a minutes limit, and was traded for to start only for the coach to shock the entire FO and insist to play him off the bench constantly... He's been the difference between at least 2-3 games that would have been losses already in his short tenure. LeVert trade was fine and he will be fine overall. He was fine tonight besides the foul trouble and that one inbounds pass.

Click to expand...

I have no idea why he's being treated as the fall guy for our poor play. We are 3-2 since he returned. That's easily 1-4 without him. He has made big plays for us while using his superhuman restraint to not smack the shit out of JBB.

nolookpass said:

Flew all the way from Boston to watch my first ever Cavs home game just to have the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse crowd be half Lakers/LeBron bandwagoners.

Oh, and what an awful defense in the 4th quarter

Click to expand...

Sorry dude I would be pissed too that crowd was lebron dick riding cheerleaders it was embarrassing

I don't usually do individual player stats when we lose, but our offense was good enough to win, so I'll go through our team. There were some good performances.

Starters:
Stevens 16-6-2 with a block in 34 minutes. He never quits, never gives up. One of his best games while defending James
Markkanen 18-9-1 in 37 minutes. A good offensive game, but he was very low intensity on defense. To put it kindly.
Mobley 13-5-2 with a block in 27 minutes. I'm not sure why he played so little. He needed to play about 10 more minutes for us to have a chance. I was screaming for him at the start of the 4th quarter.
Okoro 12-1-1 with a steal in 29 minutes. He seemed kind of uninvolved in the offense and I didn't see much of him on defense until the 4th when he was the sacrificial lamb offered to Lebron.
Garland 29-2-16 with a steal in 40 minutes. Great game in stats, but somewhat inefficient, only shooting 10-23 and 2-8 from 3. I'd rather see 4 more passes and 4 fewer 3 point shots.

Bench:
Love 8-6-4 in 20 minutes. He was roundly hated for his defense, but he's a power forward, not a center. We played him at center at the start of the 4th and gave up 12 quick points.
LeVert 13-4-2 in 16 minutes. Good production. I'd like to see him play more with Garland.
Goodwin 3-2-1 in 8 minutes
Osman 5-1-0 with a steal in 18 minutes
Brown 3-1-0 in 5 minutes
Nembhard, Windler, Davis played the last 1:35 without stats.

Raptors getting blown the fuck out thanks to Lavine

Jscc said:

I have no idea why he's being treated as the fall guy for our poor play. We are 5-4 since he returned. That's easily 2-7 without him. He has made big plays for us while using his superhuman restraint to not smack the shit out of JBB.

Click to expand...

His scoring efficiency is like 45% TS. Do you know terrible that is? He’s also been stopping ball movement and hasn’t played adequate defense since his first two games here when I actually thought he might have some untapped potential on that end. But that quickly went down the drain.

bleedwineandgold03 said:

Raptors getting blown the fuck out thanks to Lavine

Click to expand...

Had a great chance to put the Raps in a really bad spot. If we win tonight and beat them Thursday it woulda been all but over for the 6 seed. Thursday is definitely a must win for both teams. Should be a hell of a game. Mobley always gets up for playing Barnes at least.

All4One1ForAll said:

His scoring efficiency is like 45% TS. Do you know terrible that is? He’s also been stopping ball movement and hasn’t played adequate defense since his first two games here when I actually thought he might have some untapped potential on that end. But that quickly went down the drain.

Click to expand...

No idea what games you were watching. He has been one of our best playmakers. Nor am I going to hold his TS% against him while he is trying to fit in.

InBoobieWeTrust said:

Had a great chance to put the Raps in a really bad spot. If we win tonight and beat them Thursday it woulda been all but over for the 6 seed. Thursday is definitely a must win for both teams. Should be a hell of a game. Mobley always gets up for playing Barnes at least.

Click to expand...

Will Garland's hand be out of the cast by Thursday? j/k

I wish I was recording the game so I could do a play by play of the 6 minutes Goodwin got where he looked like a legit starting PG. Just made every right read.

And didn't' play another minute.

I'm positive we're gonna let him walk because JBB doesn't play him.

All4One1ForAll said:

His scoring efficiency is like 45% TS. Do you know terrible that is? He’s also been stopping ball movement and hasn’t played adequate defense since his first two games here when I actually thought he might have some untapped potential on that end. But that quickly went down the drain.

Click to expand...

Missing the forest for the trees. He won’t be a 45% TS guy long term here. He hasn’t even started 1 game. You sound ridiculous talking so badly about a guy who has single handed it won us a couple games with 0 familiarity and despite getting hurt in practice after playing like 6 games and being on a minute restriction since getting back. Citing stats about him since being bright is silly honestly because it’s just extremely unreliable small sample size nonsense. I think our closing lineups with him have looked very very strong more games than not. He’s made huge hustle plays and made some big shots and given us another dimension offensively. This roster is far from complete.

Even if we did extend a 27 year old and a 23 year old on reasonable but multi year contracts…they’re both traceable if they don’t work out. And we have a ton of picks and we have young guys who are positive assets…

I agree with JBB being bad but Dan will shitcan him if we don’t hit the milestones we are supposed to hit when we are supppsed to hit them

buzzdog said:

Will Garland's hand be out of the cast by Thursday? j/k

Click to expand...

He may need one of those fancy Jamie Lannister hands now with how bad the injury was I’m afraid.

Mobley was disappointing tonight. Gotta have more than 5 rebounds. Should have dominated the glass.

InBoobieWeTrust said:

Mobley was disappointing tonight. Gotta have more than 5 rebounds. Should have dominated the glass.

Click to expand...

Foul trouble barely played

Jscc said:

No idea what games you were watching. He has been one of our best playmakers. Nor am I going to hold his TS% against him while he is trying to fit in.

Click to expand...

How can you not hold scoring efficiency against him? When you’re over 10 percentage points below the league average and 5 percentage points below Russell freaking Westbrook, you can’t just dismiss that because he’s trying to “fit in.” He’s also been significantly below league average efficiency his whole career, so this is nothing new. His shot selection is awful and he’s been a non factor on defense. If we extend the guy, that greatly limits the roster flexibility and the potential of this team. Chalk it up as a loss and move on.