![]() ![]() Kyle Kuzma had yet another terrible game.Sometimes simplicity is the best strategy - just using the height/length advantage to shoot over smaller opponents. When he’s done spinning and lunging about, the defender is still between him and the basket, and the shot he gets is often contested and awkward. Where he should rise up and shoot over a shorter defender, Porzingis still deploys dribbles, fancy footwork and fakes. He has skills and an array of moves he can break out, but they’re simply less effective against more agile opponents. Kristaps Porzingis does better against behemoths like Rudy Gobert.Will Barton shot 4-5 from three-point range.He shot 5-9 from the floor, 2-2 from three, and had 5 assists to 1 turnover. Monte Morris was the only Wizards player whose offensive efficiency was above league average.He played stellar defense and grabbed 8 rebounds (3 on the offensive end), and had 3 assists and 3 steals. Jordan Goodwin shot poorly (just 2-7 from the floor) but was still the team’s most productive players.Los Angeles was without the services of Paul George, Ivica Zubac, Norman Powell and Reggie Jackson. For Washington, it was Bradley Beal, Delon Wright, and Rui Hachimura. The results, in order: a contested three - made, a semi-contested three - made, and an open three - missed.īoth teams had rotation players sidelined with injuries. They just missed.įor example, in the second half, the Clippers ran a standard NBA action (I think every team calls if “floppy”) for Luke Kennard on three consecutive possessions. It didn’t look like the Wizards did much particularly well on defense - the Clippers got open shots. The LA M*A*S*H unit shot poorly, committed 14 turnovers and managed an offensive rating of just 106. Now, I won’t disagree if you want to argue Washington’s performance against the Los Angeles Clippers was more towards bad/bad or bad/so-so than bad/good. They’re in yawning pursuit of the elusive good/good combo - something other teams have found repeatedly against them f or the past few decades this season. ![]() In fairness, the Wizards know this already. So far this season, they’ve had stretches where the defense was good and the offense was bad, stretches where offense was good and the defense bad, and stretches where they were bad on both ends. “In particular when he was switched onto Kawhi, he had some really good possessions that helped us get stops.Perhaps someone should alert the Wizards: It’s permissible under the rules of basketball to play well on both offense and defense in the same game. He’s had some other strong moments this year, so I don’t know if it was the best, but it’s right up there with one of those,” Vogel said. His effort and tenacity on that end of the floor left Lakers head coach Frank Vogel impressed. It’s not the first time he’s been excellent on that end this year - his game against Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics is one that quickly comes to mind as another instance of it - but it’s not a reputation that’s stuck with him.īut in the Lakers’ first game of the NBA restart and on a nationally televised stage, Kuzma showed everyone tuning in for the first time in months just how solid he can be on that end of the floor while helping the Lakers get a 103-101 win against the LA Clippers on a night they played far from their best basketball. That last part especially proved true for Kuzma’s defense against the Clippers. ![]() This is like a restart,” Kuzma said on his postgame Zoom call with the media on Thursday night. “Once we got here, we don’t think about what happened in the past. Los Angeles has actually only been slightly worse defensively with Kuzma on the floor this season (by 0.3 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com) and he’s clearly been trying harder, but his reputation as a guy who is too often upright and prone to blow-bys has been hard to shake, and exacerbated by the fact that for most of the year, he wasn’t doing enough offensively to distract from his issues on the other end.īut while that’s a reputation Kuzma has, it’s not one he’s worried about. It’s fair to say that Kyle Kuzma has not exactly been known for his defense during his first three seasons with the Lakers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |