The Los Angeles Lakers have had one of the most tumultuous seasons we have seen in a long, long time and Pau Gasol has been in the center of it all for much of the season.
With a plethora of injuries to key players and adjusting to life without Dwight Howard, the Lakers have played themselves to the second worst record in the West. Unlike Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, who have missed a majority of the season due to a variety of debilitating injuries, Gasol has managed to play through it all – controversies with Mike D’Antoni and all – for most of the season.
Until now.
After suffering some ill-effects from vertigo over the past couple of weeks, it appears the team may be ready to shut him down for the remainder of the season. Indeed, the center may have played the last game of his career in a Lakers uniform, from Mike Bresnahan of Los Angeles Times:
The team is leaning toward sitting him for its final seven games while he recovers from a severe recurrence of vertigo.
He won’t play Friday against Dallas after dizziness kept him confined at the team hotel Wednesday while the Lakers played Sacramento. He flew back on the team charter that night after missing a fifth game because of the illness.
It was the latest downturn in a rough season for Gasol.
In addition to various verbal tussles with Coach Mike D’Antoni about his role in the offense — and the small-ball concept in general — Gasol missed seven games in February because of a strained groin and three games in December because of a respiratory infection.
He leads the team in scoring (17.4 points a game) but is shooting only 48%, the second lowest accuracy of his career.
Gasol, 33, becomes a free agent after this season, sure to take a pay cut from the $19.3 million he currently makes but unsure where he will land. If it’s somewhere else, his last game with the Lakers will have been a nine-point, four-rebound effort in a 124-112 loss Tuesday to Portland.
It’s not out of the question that Gasol may come back to the team he has won two championships with for one more season, but D’Antoni would likely have to be out as coach before that option is considered. The two clearly have philosophical differences, and that’s a problem when you’re trying to play for your next contract as a player who favors working out of the post.
Unfortunately, reports from last week suggested that the team is leaning towards keeping D’Antoni so as not to pay two separate coaches (the other one being Mike Brown) to not coach the team. In all likelihood, we have seen the last of the Bryant-Gasol tandem.
THE ZEN MASTER SAYS KNICKS CAN MAKE NOISE IN THE PLAYOFFS:
It still feels a bit strange to hear Phil Jackson speaking in great lengths about the New York Knicks, but that is the reality of the situation: he pretty much owns them now.
The Knicks have been such a dysfunctional group for much of the season. Yet, there is still plenty of intrigue surrounding the team, not only because they play in New York, but because the potential to be a good team is still somehow there, evidenced by their 12-3 record over the last 15 games.
So if they manage to get themselves into the playoffs – a distinct possibility with the Atlanta Hawks reeling down the stretch – can they actually do any damage against a first seed? Jackson seems to think so, from Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN New York:
Jackson agrees with Tyson Chandler: The Knicks could give whomever the top seed in the East will be some fits if they get in as the eighth seed.
“Well, with J.R. [Smith] playing at the level he’s playing at now, yes,” Jackson said. “Now they have more than one option out there on the floor and I think that we’ll give teams trouble.”
“We’re all happy to see Amar’e have a resurgence here,” he added. “It’s been a long, hard struggle for him, rehabbing and trying to get himself ready for this opportunity, and we’re happy to see that. The fact he missed a game the other night and was able to come back and play at the level he did last night was really a good sign.”
[…]
“I’m still a coach that believes in pressure, pressure defense, playing like we saw the Knicks play last night — anticipation, turnovers become run-outs,” Jackson said. “I was able to tell Iman today that’s what has to be seen on a basis that we’d like to see from game to game.
“It might not happen every game, but those are the things that break games open and give you opportunities to win when you have easy baskets. And defense can do that, so that’s a really important aspect.”
The enthusiasm over Smith’s play in recent weeks is warranted: in March, the guard averaged 15.5 points on 45 percent shooting – including 80 percent from the line and 40 percent from the 3-point line while knocking down a whopping 2.8 threes – to go with 3.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and just 1.1 turnover. His effective aggression on the offensive end has eased the load for Carmelo Anthony a great deal. The same can be said about Stoudemire, and that’s a big deal because the question of whether he and Anthony could co-exist has been lingering the moment Anthony landed in New York. Remember, the winning streak only began the moment Stoudemire was inserted into the starting lineup.
Beating the Indiana Pacers or Miami Heat in the first round is all but unlikely to happen, but giving them fits is a possibility and a path in the right direction, given the kind of season they have had. To be perfectly clear, they are no locks to make it into the playoffs. In fact, New York arguably has one of the toughest schedules to finish out the season: the final six games are all against playoff teams, meaning teams that have been better than them all season long. They’ll have to dig deep to come out with a winning record during the final stretch, but after impressive victories against Golden State and Brooklyn in recent games, the Knicks are showing that there is plenty of fight left in the tank.
DOC RIVERS HAS FULL CONTROL IN CLIPPERS LAND:
We all know that Chris Paul’s abilities as a point guard is second to none. No one has ever questioned his style of play, and no coach has ever thought to prevent him from having full control of the ball and the offense. Let him dictate who gets what shot every possession. Let him dribble out the clock and create something from nothing. This has been the motto of some of the recent coaches Paul has had, but Doc Rivers has been teaching his point guard about the importance of moving the ball early in the offense – even if it means Paul doesn’t necessarily always have control of the ball. Kate Fagan of ESPN explains in her fantastic piece:
“Players want to find out if you know what you’re talking about when it pertains to them, to the way they do things,” Rivers says. “Every one of them will tell you they want to win, but I don’t think everybody in the league means that. I think they mean it as long as they can keep doing whatever it is they want to do. Winning requires sacrifice.”
“I think Chris realized last year in the playoffs, holding the ball, getting double-teamed, getting down to late shot clocks every time, you’re not going to win that way,” Rivers says. “Movement, quick decisions, pulling it and swinging it and trusting the pass — that makes Chris impossible to guard. And I think he realizes it now.”
At the start of the season, Paul pushed back. He was used to having the ball in his hands for the majority of every possession, controlling the rhythm of the offense with his dribble. Rivers was asking him to give up the ball early and only sometimes get it back later, requiring a new level of trust in his teammates.
And then Rivers asked for even more. When Paul was sidelined with a shoulder injury for 18 games in January and February, Rivers urged him to consider giving up the ball even earlier, while still in the backcourt. Paul smiles thinking about the term Rivers used: the hockey assist. “Sometimes it’s about the pass that leads to the pass,” says Paul, a seven-time All-Star who was averaging 18.8 points and 10.9 assists through March 25. “It’s been fun, passing the ball ahead to Blake, letting him push it and make plays. It’s not always about the assist.”
Basketball is a team sport. It may sound like an overused cliche, but it’s the truest statement you can make about the game. One man can’t try to single-handedly win games because that usually doesn’t work, especially against the best teams in the playoffs. Whether your name is LeBron James, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant or any other marquee name in the league, this fact has always held true.
As great as Paul is when it comes to handling the ball, the offense often stalled when he would dribble out the clock in past years. It gave the impression that the team couldn’t function without him, and if a team gets accustomed to that style of play, then the impression becomes a reality – a reality that you are not a very good team without that one ball handler.
The perfect example is Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors. For much of the season (which also means for far too long), Curry was relied upon to create offense for his team, possession after possession. The responsibility wore thin on Curry and as good as he was in that role, he was incredibly turnover prone (and some of them were grade-school terrible), was often gassed by the end of games, and yes, the Warriors were comical whenever he was off the floor. In recent games, they have used multiple players – capable ones like Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and even Klay Thompson to an extent – to move the ball and create for each other, and the offense has looked exponentially better because of it.
Getting back on the topic of the Clippers, they have proven this season that they can, in fact, be a great basketball team even without their star point guard thanks to Rivers’ philosophy. This is not to say that moving the ball is the only way to play every single time down. Situations matter, and so does the amount of talent you have on the team. In the case of the Clippers, they have the talent – ball handlers, shooters, finishers – to dominate in a ball-moving offense. The ultimate point here is not that they can be just as good without Paul, but that they can reach true elite status by playing the right way with the best point guard in the league leading the way, without having to dominate the ball every possession. It actually allows them to be more unpredictable, and an unpredictable offense is the most dangerous kind of offense. Good on Rivers for preaching this and getting a stubborn Paul to get on board.
James Park is the chief blogger of Sheridan Hoops. You can find him on twitter @SheridanBlog.
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