Outside of D'Angelo and Rui being a zero, AG singlehandedly turned this game around in the 3rd outhustling LeBron, that is where the game was decided.
Credit to AD, he was great in this series and has been for all of year. Get him a point guard that will actually feed him in the 4th so he is not shooting 2-3 attempts every game in the 4th.
It will be interesting to see if the FO abandons depth again for 3 guys. Depth helps during regular season and this team definitely needs it because of the top 2 guys but it's hard to count on them during the playoffs. Do they want to give up future assets for what likely could be Bron's last year? Will AD ever be this healthy again? About to be a stressful summer for Robert
I don’t think the depth played that big a role this year.
The main reason why the Lakers were as good as they were was because LeBron and AD played most of the year
The second reason was D’lo hitting his hot stretch and turning the team into an explosive offense
AR and Rui had up and down years and u can attribute a lot of their consistency issues to Ham not giving them defined roles
Other than that all the other “depth pieces” have been underwhelming to say the least
- Gabe played 5 games
- Reddish has been a bust
- Vando missed most of the year
- Wood had an inconsistent role and then got injured
- Hayes just isn’t good enough
And as much as he got shyt on Taurean Prince was actually the best offseason pick up for the team. And that’s just embarrassing.
So I don’t think there will be any debate this time about the depth vs star route. Even if you looked at the 3rd, 4th and 5th options on this team. You have no clue what you are going to get from them on a night to night basis. The only player that you know had an extra gear is Reaves…but at the end of the day he just might not be good enough to consistently be that 3rd guy.
They are already steadfast in the belief that they need another star to usher in the new era so they might as well start now. Because it makes no sense to run it back with inconsistent players like D’lo and Rui who are getting paid almost 20 mil per year when they tend to no show more than they actually show up in the playoffs…
They choose depth last year over making a run at Kyrie who was flying to LA and lobbying for them to make it happen. And looking back on the year the impact Kyrie had on the Mavs this year>> the impact that D’lo, Rui, Vando had on the Lakers this year.
They have to find a star to help slot Bron and AD to into their rightful roles…it just has to be a fit on 3 sides of the ball (scoring, playmaking and not be a sieve on defense)
