Bryant understands that coming at Gasol after an abysmal performance wasn’t going to get him to play better. There’s no telling where his confidence is after being booed by fans at Staples Center for a stretch of the third quarter when he lacked any sort of rhythm on offense and couldn’t gain any ground defensively. Instead Bryant sat there in Gasol’s defense and stated the team needed to orchestrate the offense in order to get him some easy looks.
Andrew Bynum who ended the night with 18 points and 13 rebounds is another guy the Lakers might want to consider getting easy looks to. Post-game Bynum told the press he felt his team had “trust issues.” It remains unclear what exactly he was referring to—it could’ve stemmed the frustration of having to sit on the bench during crunch-time or as Bryant suggested, “the trust [Bynum’s] referring to is being able to help each other on the defensive end of the floor.” It could also be that what the Lakers aren’t putting much faith and trust into is their offense.
“I tried to be aggressive but there’s not much of a flow right now in our offense and that’s killing everybody’s rhythm and everybody’s confidence a little bit so we have to move the ball, change sides of the floor and make our triangle work for us instead of when the ball gets stuck too much on one side,” added Gasol. “That’s just giving too much of an advantage to [the Mavericks] defense. They’re set. They’re not working as hard as we’re working on the other end — second, third, fourth effort — it’s just basically having to do one effort. It’s something we have to think about.”
The offense will be something Jackson will certainly address over the course of the team’s quick turn-around to Dallas for a must-win Game 3. While giving up 93 points was neither great nor terrible, only posting up 81 was likely just as bad. Go ahead and give Dallas credit on defense, but the Lakers missed a lot of open looks and even some easy baskets at the rim.
Next: What the Lakers have to do to take back this series
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