I missed this game flying to Amsterdam to see my daughter who is an exchange student here. I have recovered from my plane trip and drinking lots of beer so here are some interesting points.
- In Game 4 Suns were +18 with Dragic in the game. When Phil Jackson masterfully put Vujajic, Bryant, Farmar, Odom and Gasol or Bynum on the court the Lakers were +6 against Dragic.
- Frye is doing much better against Odom: Suns were +7 last night in 26 minutes with Frye on the court against Odom.
- Lopez only played 10 minutes. He has been great the rest of the series, so it will be interesting to see what Gentry does with Lopez in Game 6.
- The Suns were +1 in 29 minutes against Gasol Odom, +6 points in 11 minutes against Bynum and Gasol, but in 8 minutes Bynum and Odom killed the Suns:+9 points. The rest of the series Bynum and Odom has played poorly: -27 points in 24 minutes, so great job by Lakers of fixing this problem. For the first time Artest and Fisher played with Bynum, Bryant and Odom, and Lakers were +5 points in 2 minutes with this lineup.
- Bynum with an Adjustted +/- of -15 points has been the worst regular in this series.
All the Suns can do now is take this one game at a time, first up is to win at home. So from the numbers it looks like Vujajic contained Dragic? How many beers have you and the +/- formulas consumed Professor Winston?:)
Comment by Derek — May 28, 2010 @ 5:47 pm
So now that the series is over, I’m wondering what the Suns can do for next season? I thought that Jared Dudley played better 1 on 1 defense against Kobe than Grant Hill did. I thought that Dragic could help rest Nash, but he operated more as a scorer than distributor (the way Barbosa did in the 3-4 years prior), and I felt that Amare was most effective when Lopez was playing at the same time. What do the numbers say?
Comment by Mike — June 1, 2010 @ 4:03 pm