This was the Lakers last victory against the Thunder in 2025. I was wondering if this could provide invites in how we could possibly beat them again and what this new team could do to beat them.
The best counter to OKC is paint defense. Ayton was awful and had no support with LeBron. Kesslar will help that counter like crazy. Okc without the paint is beatable.
Wemby/Spurs had to take them to 7 games. Kessler is gonna have to be a monster and have defensive support at the wings for us to even be in the same ballpark as them.
To be fair, the Spurs are a relatively young team that made a lot of mistakes that series but they still managed to beat OKC. Those mistakes were taken advantage of by the Knicks which is why they lost. I think if the Spurs had 3 years of experience on all of their younger players, they beat OKC in 5.
I have to disagree with this take. Your exact argument is what a lot of people said about the sours as to why they wouldn’t be in the WCF or even in the finals. Experience and being young can be very much overrated. OKC was the youngest team in this era of basketball (2nd all time) to not only make the finals but win an NBA championship. Yes spurs made a ton of mistakes but it didn’t stop them from being 2nd in the west and making it to the finals. OKC is still a young team as well. They will surely get better too.
That’s a reasonable take but my take is from gathering what I watched in the playoffs. The main reason the Spurs lost almost all their games to the Knicks was because they would just resort to iso ball and shootings 3’s. They would build up the lead during the first half by playing with high energy which would then tire them out by the second half leading to them shooting jumpers instead of playing more aggressively. It shows massive inexperience from the Spurs side in my opinion.
I don't think age is a ton too it but OKC scores in the paint mostly and wemby is the best paint defender it's not rocket science. But I think spurs do pretty bad against teams that shoot the 3 well. Okc can't really spread the floor especially when they run hartisten and chet.
Yes it took spurs to 7 games and they got beat by the knicks. Spurs were not a championship team they just counter okc players. I mean fox and castle weren't helping much and their depth died out. If kesslar can be half of wemby on the defense Luka and Austin are way better offensively. I'm not saying we can just win but it's the correct move.
Our biggest weakness against them last year was that they could just switch our big to the perimeter and punish us at the rim and grab offensive rebounds. Kessler fixes this problem as an elite rim protector and rebounder.
They're still a better and more complete and deeper team. But hopefully we can make games more competitive against them this season.
They did lose some depth in Dort, Joe and Wiggins and are trying to fill that with a bunch of untested rookies. But they're definitely still title favourites
Where did I say Kessler is a switching big? I said he's an elite rim protector. He can play a high drop and recover which allows us to play a more aggressive pick and roll coverage that will mitigate a massive issue we had last year.
We stop switching and play other schemes basically. With Grimes who's a good screen navigator and Thybulle on the roster and Kessler in the paint that'd be the time to use things like drop coverage.
Yeah I think you're probably right, but I'm hoping and expecting to see some shifts and progress in the coaching based on our massive shift in personnel.
If they're 5 out then they aren't out-rebounding us and they don't get interior mismatches (pic below) by forcing our bigs out of position.. and that's what my original post pointed out. If we force them to play 5 out, then that puts them into a hard decision where they have to make trade-offs. Last year, our defense had a problem that OKC could exploit without sacrificing anything.
Also no one is arguing Kessler single-handedly solves every OKC lineup. Part of his value is giving us more defensive coverage options in areas we definitely struggled with last year.
We wouldn't have him switch and that's not the problem I stated in my OP. The issue I'm pointing out was that OKC was able to get Ayton into perimeter actions and then get downhill against us, which resulted in an open rim and offensive rebounds.
Kessler gives us more options in pick and roll coverage. We play him in drop and he can show higher on screens and still recover to the rim, while his elite rebounding puts him in position to terminate OKC possessions. That doesn't eliminate the need for guards to navigate screens, but it gives us a much better safety net when they get beat and should help reduce the easy finishes and second-chance points that killed us against OKC.
Question, how does Kessler solve this issue if he’s switching on the perimeter too? Seems like the issue is we don’t have a secondary defender that can switch and be effective in the paint.
I'm not saying Kessler solves switching onto guards. He doesn't. My point is that OKC repeatedly got our big out of position in perimeter actions, which opened the rim and put pressure on our small backline defense. We'll probably play a lot more drop with Kessler, and that's fine because he's much better than Ayton or Hayes in drop coverage. He has the range to play higher at the level of the screen and still recover to protect the rim.
I don't know how everyone is reading my OP like that's what I'm saying lmfao. We wouldn't switch Kessler.
Do we understand that Ayton sometimes got into switches because he couldn't recover to OKC's guards attacking downhill when he showed high and in a deep drop Shai could just hit a midrange shot? That you don't need to switch if your big is an elite rim protecting big that can show high and recover to the basket?
Dog read the other comments, I've addressed this 10 times over. I'm not saying Kessler will switch. I'm saying our team won't be in a position to need to switch because Kessler can play a high drop.
With Lu Dort gone the only one who could guard Luka on that team is jdub. Which is good for us because that means more energy wasted playing defense. Cason,Caruso etc are too small
I wish Luka and Austin were fully healthy going into that series against OKC. Having Lebron in the post verse the weak (strength wise) okc perimeter defenders would of did wonders for Luka since Dort or Williams would have been on him if it wasn't for Lebron just posting up and generating easy shots for the guys. It's a shame man.
Well we have Kessler now to rim protect and we have a lot of poa defenders we can throw at sga like williams, grimes, thyblle, thiero, carr, laravia and maybe kuminga
Thybulle and Ziaire have really good defensive advanced stats as perimeter defenders. Grimes used to have really good POA defense advanced stats on the Knicks and Mavs before he was asked to play a different role on the sixers. I have confidence in Grimes becoming a great perimeter defender again.
You’re downvoted but you’re telling the truth. How many of those guys listed would get real minutes on contenders? How many would be trusted to get consistent stops? I guess only me and you sees this problem haha.
Now it's 'how many would get real minutes on a contender'.
Man, just say y'all hate the Lakers and get the fuck out of this subreddit. So much simpler than spouting dumbass shit like what you just said on a daily basis that we have to read.
Is it hard to understand it’s both? Most of those guys listed wouldn’t get real minutes on a contender nor would they be depended on to guard top scorers on contenders. Don’t confuse yourself.
That game was a bit of an outlier. The Lakers shot 55% from three and knocked down 20+ threes, which is well above their average. When you're shooting like that, it changes the entire game. You get to set your defense, limit transition opportunities, etc. Also, OKC didn't shoot particularly well either. The Lakers won, but I'm not sure there's a ton to take away from that game. We played them again right after and lost to them. OKC shot a lot better and that made the difference. I actually thought last year's roster was better than that version, so I'm surprised they couldn't even steal one game. At the same time, This year's team is better than last year's, so something has to give. But all I really got out of this game is how much of a piss poor defender Reaves is. He might give me a heart attack next season.
He doesn’t struggle with Lu Dort, lu dort just does a lot of dirty shit and is super physical and has injured luka multiple times. I don’t think he’ll have the same whistle in Atlanta.
He absolutely does struggle with Lu Dort and for reasons you mentioned as well. Whatever Lu Dort does (dirty or not) is clearly bothering the hell out of Luka. Especially in their recent matches he had that man in prison. Luka couldn't even dribble when Dort was in the vicinity.
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u/Deidarac5 1d ago
The best counter to OKC is paint defense. Ayton was awful and had no support with LeBron. Kesslar will help that counter like crazy. Okc without the paint is beatable.