Game 80: Los Angeles Lakers (48-31) vs. Dallas Mavericks (38-41)

[Hooper21]

This.  I love Lively.  He has been bad since returning.  I loved the center combo of Lively and Gafford just playing hard all the time.  I really liked PJ as a PF wild card.  Who provided toughness and athleticism with streaky shooting, but had gotten up to 37% from three from the year.    I don't want to make final judgements because everyone has been hurt and just returned, but the reviews are not great.  Our starting front court has looked terrible so far.  PJ looks not suited to be a SF, especially when we are so limited by creation.  Lively is just out there when playing with AD.    AD looks slow and moves like a 5 right now.  On defense teams are getting shots at the rim and wide open threes.  Tough to imagine this being a super strength of the team moving forward.  If it is not, how do they change it?

I'm leaning toward PJ and Gaff being the biggest benefactors of playing with Luka.  Now that he's gone, they look more like they did with their prior teams.  Lively might be in that category, too.  I know they're coming off injuries and may not be 100%, but without Luka they may not be as effective.  We saw that with Dirk - he made a lot of teammates look better than they did before/after.  

Can you imagine being Nico?  The better part of 20k people chanting that you should be fired and generally being despised?  I don't think Dumbmot fires him.  That would leave him as the sole target unless he can shift the focus to Kidd.