 Do the Los Angeles Lakers need one more piece? Or are they just not good enough to match up with the Los Angeles Clippers? These are the questions that people have been asking since they lost in the first game of the season to the Clippers and obviously in the Christmas Day game just a few days ago. I've had time to think, I've had time to come up with a solution and I've had time to make this video. Yes it's been a few days, but I thought I'd take my time with this one because I want to nail a few points. With that said, if you enjoy NBA content and you enjoy these types of videos, be sure to hit that subscribe button for more NBA content every single week and hit the notification button so you never miss an upload. And if you would like to support the channel, I'd greatly appreciate it if you guys could drop a like. And let's get on to the video. So the way that I'm gonna format this video is I'm gonna discuss a few questions that I came up with when I watched the Los Angeles Clippers and the Lakers game. Then I want to talk about who the Lakers may be able to go after considering they don't have a lot of cap room and they do kind of need one more piece in my opinion and then just a general discussion about the game. So without further ado, here are the questions that I have. Number one. In the opening game of the season, we saw the Clippers and the Lakers match up against each other and we saw LeBron James and Anthony Davis abuse the pick and roll. Then we saw this Christmas Day game and they barely did want pick and roll. And if you watched the game, you would have heard Mark Jackson suggest that the Lakers don't have a bread-and-butter pick-and-roll player like most of the top NBA contenders. My concern is watching this Laker team in 2019 going into 2020. Every successful team that we can remember of late had a legitimate pick-and-roll part of their option and offense that can take advantage of you in spurts. I look at this Laker team and they're the one team that has a legitimate chance to win it all that they do not have a pick-and-roll legitimate threat. Would that be a concern if you were over there? Which obviously doesn't sound right considering it's LeBron James and Anthony Davis and that is what they do. They use the pick-and-roll to their advantage and we saw that in the opening game of the season. They lost that game, but in the end maybe they're just running different sets to see what they can run when they have to verse the Clippers in the future. And when they did run a pick-and-roll, we saw an easy connection from LeBron to Davis who got an easy slam. In my opinion, I have a feeling that the Lakers purposely chose not to run a lot of pick-and-rolls. I think they're doing this on purpose, but I could be wrong. Maybe the defense of the Clippers was just way too strong. Bev was locking down, Paul George and Kawai are obviously locked down defenders, so maybe the Clippers were just better on defense, but in my opinion, I think it's a purpose thing by the Lakers. The next thing that I noticed was that Kuzma obviously was their third option this game. Obviously he's been injured, he hasn't been able to have a steady run this season, but he played very very well, especially to start out in the first half. He can't have slowed down the second half, but is Kuz good enough to be their third option? I know he's young, he's a trade asset. Is he the guy that can really be the Lakers third option when you head into the playoffs? He may be. I believe if he can play like the way he did in the first half, he can definitely be a third option, but it's gonna be interesting to see what he does up until the trade deadline because if he doesn't produce, he may be on the block. In addition, I don't think that the Los Angeles Lakers know what their best lineup is. The Clippers tend to run a very small ball lineup. It's either Paul George or Kawhi that normally goes to four, they leave Harold the five, and they know their best lineup. They know it's Pat Bev, Lou Will, Paul George, Kawhi and Harold. In my opinion, I don't think that the Lakers know who their best lineup is. At times they've got Rondo there, but then you don't really want to pair Rondo up, even though it's a decent three-point shooter this season, even though obviously his percentages are up and he has improved, I wouldn't trust Rondo to take the game tie in three when you have Danny Green and even KCP on your team. So I'm personally not sure if the Lakers know what their best lineup is. Late in the game, they ran Rondo, KCP, Kuzma, LeBron and Davis. In my opinion, if I'm the Lakers, I would have taken Rondo out and put in Danny Green because that's the reason why he's there. He's a 3 and D guy, which is what you want in a clutch situation. I'm not sure if Frank Vogel is playing tactics here. I feel like the Christmas Day game has been a bit of a tactic play by the Lakers because there's a lot of things that don't match up to how they've been playing throughout the season. They don't normally run Rondo late in games when they have Danny Green there and they don't normally run a little amount of pick-and-rolls either. And another thing I noticed was that Dwight was playing very physical and actually getting the Lakers in the game when he was on the court. But then at the end of the game, they took him off the court, which I guess makes sense. But when the Clippers are running very small ball lineup, I would almost like to see how the Lakers match up if they ran a bigger lineup, Dwight, Davis, Kuzma, Green and LeBron. I just want to see how that would work. I'm not saying it's gonna be good. I just want to see how they can match up playing Davis and Dwight together in a clutch situation. I mean, I feel like they will do that at some point later in the season because Dwight's defensive presence is actually very solid. Now, I'm not saying they're gonna do this for every single game and I'm not saying they should do this every clutch game, obviously. In a clutch situation, probably leave Dwight on the bench. But what I did notice when I watched him in this game was that he was playing very well and when he was on the court, the Lakers were producing at a higher level than when he was off. So that's my personal opinion. But then again, I understand what the Lakers are doing and why he was on the bench. But I don't understand why Danny Green was on the bench. With that said, here are a few trade targets I believe that the Lakers can go after. Now, I'm not sure if they're gonna be looking to trade Carl Kuzma because obviously he's a guy that's been on the team for a while. He's getting into his groove. He obviously is coming back from injury. So we're gonna leave Carl Kuzma on the roster for now. But I just think we're gonna have to see how he plays up until the trade deadline to see if the Lakers can try and get a third All-Star to pair up with Davidson LeBron and make it a big three. But I just don't know how the contracts will work out. That is also why getting a guy like Andre Gdala in terms of trade and JJ Redick, Marcus Morris, it's gonna be tough because obviously these guys have pretty big salaries which makes it hard for the Lakers to trade for them. But considering the Utah Jazz just waved Jeff Green, I wouldn't be surprised if the Lakers went after Jeff Green for a backup small forward. I mean, he's a guy that's played with LeBron in 2018. He's made it to the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Finals. He doesn't necessarily have to play a lot. He in fact doesn't really have to play at all. But he knows what it takes to get to the finals. He knows what a championship team is like. He's been on championship teams before. He's been on the Celtics. He's been in Cleveland and he's the guy that's played with LeBron and he's the guy that wouldn't cost much either. And they don't have a lot of tradeable players. They're not gonna trade Danny Green away even though he's worth $14 million. The only guy I could see is maybe Cadwell Pope although he has been playing pretty well. So having Cadwell Pope who's around $8 million, Avery Bradley at $5 million and then you throw in Quinn Cook, unless they throw in a future first round pick, that means you can end up getting a guy that could be a good contributor, a third scoring option, maybe a guy like JJ Redick, although I don't know if they'd want JJ Redick since Cadwell Pope is already playing decent and Avery Bradley can definitely lock down. But there's a few players on the trade block from other teams that I think the Lakers will definitely look to acquire. Cook and Cadwell Pope and maybe a pick, maybe you can get you Andre Godala. The guy I really like is Marcus Morris from the New York Knicks, he's a guy that's averaging 18 points per game shooting over 45% from deep, he's a very tough player and I think the Lakers could definitely use a guy like Marcus Morris, that's the guy that I think the Lakers should go after. I'm not sure what the Knicks would be willing to take for Morris, but if the Lakers can throw in a future pick and still keep Kuzma but maybe trade Cadwell Pope and Quinn Cook alongside whoever else, it could be the right guy that the Lakers could utilize because then you can run a line up at the end of the game with LeBron, Danny Green, Carl Kuzma, Marcus Morris and Anthony Davis which I believe that's a very good lineup to match up against the Clippers. Now as for the game itself obviously it was an amazing game to watch, pretty much the best Christmas day game we could have asked for, yes obviously there was no game winner or anything like that but it was definitely close, Pat Bev obviously with a massive defensive effort at the end of the game, in real time you thought that the Lakers would get it back and have a chance to tie the game but obviously that was not the case and Pat Bev is an amazing defender so yeah he just made an amazing play, but obviously the game in itself was interesting because the Lakers were up the entire game, they held a 63 to 51 halftime lead and then obviously in the second half it just went down the drain, Kuzma obviously couldn't hit the shots he was hitting in the first half, LeBron obviously didn't play the way that LeBron normally does, even though he had 23 points he shot 9 of 24 from the field and 2 from 12 from beyond the arc and obviously he couldn't hit a shot to start the game, he went 0 for 7, the Lakers could have played better but in the end it was the Clippers, they had the guys that were able to close out the game, Kawai Leonard closing out the game like he normally does, Paul George obviously closed out the game but his defensive efforts were also there as well and that's the one thing that the Clippers have, they're defensively so much better than most of the other teams in the league, they can play all positions, the one thing that they don't have though is defensive presence at the big man position which is why I'm so surprised that LeBron and Davis didn't have more pick and roll opportunities because when you think about it trying to stop LeBron going down hill is hard enough but then if you try and help you've got Anthony Davis for a lob and then if you get another defender trying to guard Davis then you've got wide open shooters so I'm surprised that I think they will start to use more pick and rolls if they match up in the playoffs because I don't think it's as easy to say that the Clippers are 2-0 against the Lakers which means they're going to play better in the playoffs, I think that it's difficult to predict how the Lakers and Clippers will actually fair if they do meet off in the playoffs but I don't know if it means a whole lot in terms of bragging rights, I do think yeah if you're a Clippers fan you should be excited and you should be happy but in the end I think it's just going to be one of those games that in a seven game series we're going to see the better team win and obviously the Clippers have been the better team throughout the regular season so far in terms of the two teams matching up but obviously once we get to the playoffs that's when it really starts to kick off. In the end it was just an amazing game 16 lead changes 10 tyres the Lakers were able to nearly force overtime and obviously the Clippers ended up winning you can't ask for a much better game but let me know what you think about the Lakers and the Clippers and let me know what you think the Lakers should do next. If you enjoyed this video please leave a like to support the channel, subscribe if you're new for NBA content every single week and if you want you can follow me on Instagram as well. It's me DeBond and Smith, I am out, peace.