I think Wix AI has had enough of me.
I was telling the AI to make me an Aaron Gordon jam after a Michael Porter Jr. drop pass.
Instead, he just combined the two.
Anyway, the Lakers feared those drop passes. There was a time when the Denver Nuggets spammed the move. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and MPJ were just hitting the former Slam Dunk (should have been) king underneath and it forced LA's defense to sag around him. This opened a lot of opportunities from the outside, which turned Gordon from assassin to decoy.
Look, I don't care how small ball the NBA has become with their bigs nailing triples, and all of that. I know how mangled Dwight Howard, Jahlil Okafor, and James Wiseman are, but in the playoffs, the teams will always take those high-percentage shots - which is why those inside passes are important.
And while I am not defending D'Angelo Russell, I can see the Lakers zeroing on him as the culprit. The thing about Russell is that he's a distant third as far as team superstars go and if Anthony Davis can't get the shots in the fourth quarter, then I doubt if Russell will have a say on things when LBJ wants to take over.
Anyway, the Lakers are down 0-3 and on the verge of getting swept by the Nuggets for the second consecutive time.
For Denver, they want to sweep the Lakers because if history served them right, this would indicate a title repeat.
But for the Lakers, this is going to be another roster implosion.
And yeah, if there's one thing Miami and Cleveland have thought us, is that sometimes they are better off with LeBron James out of the picture because aside from the fact that they can let things loose, at least they are sure that their coach is more than just a scapegoat.