Los Angeles Lakers V New Orleans Pelicans

So with one game down out of a 7 game series, lets call this a P-review as game 1 might tell us just as much as the season series has already told us about this match up. First though lets look through the regular season. The Lakers swept the Pels and with convincing margins in every game. While some of these games we saw the Pels undermanned, with no Doncic or Irving in the line up, this was actually the closest they came all season with only a 21 point loss. The Pels hosted the Lakers only a few weeks ago with a full health squad and lost by 25. Intersting to note that in that game the Lakers were without Cade Cunningham, who their leadership has indicated may be the only holdover going into next year from their cohort of stars. Their other game of the season was the largest blowout, and came before the Irving and Horford trades for the Pels, so I'm counting this game as irrelevant. The common factor in both recent losses were double digit rebounding differential in favour of the Lakers, as this has been a hallmark of their season and a strong indicator for success in the league in general.

Now lets take a cheating look at game 1 to see how this played out in respect to the rest of the season series. A much closer affair, with not many changes to the Pels line up from their 25 point defeat. The Lakers had Cade for this one and put Nembhard back to the branch, it looks like they tried to get cute by also shifting the successful front court pairing of Wendell Carter Junior and Drummond to a Drummon and Kevin Durant group, to make way for James Johnson to start. This cuteness backfired somewhat, while still pulling out the victory, the rebounding margin was on 2 in favour of the Lakers. Johnson looked like he couldn't slow down Grayson Allen who went off for 30 while Johnson fouled out in 16 minutes. Another strange anomally in this game was the 48min stretch for Mr Curry who found a way to play through any hint of exhaustion. 

Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers were a big news team all season, turning their fortunes around through some savvy trades and consistant league engagement. This level of activity and the appropriate balance of patience in negoitiating usually pays dividends in success. They've got a number of MVP candidates and very solid role players throughout the roster, and they have built team team with what I think is the 2k recipe for success, rebounding and star power.

Kevin Durant and Steph Curry are the obiovus star power couple that were brought together this year. KD does just about everything in the game, scoring and defence, length and speed, you couldn't ask for a better star. Steph as we all know has been leading the way in Denver for years, and has gone ring chasing with the league leader in a deadline deal. His flamethrower heat from deep is difficult to slow down, as was shown in his Denver run where he was averaging over 40 per game. Now in LA he has to share a bit more and his scoring has dropped to a measly 30 per.

The shooting from the stars is best surrounded by elite rebounding and defence, and there is no better 3rd wheel in any championship team than Mr Andre Drummond. Throughout the season he averaged a 15/16 double double with close to 2 steals per game, plus 1.5 blocks. He was #2 in offensive rebounds and #3 in FG% and #6 in steals. Ridiculous 3rd wheel.

Calling Drummond the 3rd wheel is a slight disrespect to Cade Cunningham who ends up being a 24 ppg glue guy on this squad but it is what it is. Cade will be running the team one day, but this year he is here for playoff and maybe championship experience.

The team is so deep. Wendell Carter Jnr is a fantastic role player for this squad, and watch out for Andrew Nembhard next year too. Then we still have Derrick Jones Jnr who adds another skilled vet to the squad but wont take too many shots away from the stars.

Lakers are the real deal.

 New Orleans Pelicans

Leeroy had a busy season turning over his whole starting line up to get to where the team is today. Starting of course with the drawn out Luka trade. After that it was about finding the pieces that fit around him because you know he is going to bring a near triple double every game. The first domino to fall into place after Luka was Gobert, like I've mentioned already rebounding is an important factor, and when Gobert grabs nearly 15 a game and also brings 3 blocks a game, it helps form a backline behind a less than lock down defensive backcourt.

Following Gobert we saw Grayson Allen join and Marvin Bagley pack his Bagleys. What initially looked like a cost cutting move and looking to add a 6th man, ended up being a key starter shooting 59% from deep, while undersized at the 3 his 15 per game makes up for any defensive short comings.

Kyrie Irving joined a week later to reflect the NBA backcourt pairing that has seen so much success this year. Irving has been scoring well, ranked #4 and is efficient when doing so. Then final piece of the puzzle to join was Al Horford, we were told how valuable a piece he was leading up to the trade, and it has played out that way as the team has only lost less than a handful of times since he joined, not including week 20 when no one played for the Pels.

X Factors

The X factors for this series will be the defensive match ups. We've seen the Lakers try get tricky by mixing and matching their line up to counter what they think best suits the opposition, and maybe even to throw a curveball into any potential match up simming the Pels might be doing. Then you've got two good defensive bigs for the Pels who have to match up against potentially 3 strong rebounding and offensive threats in Drummond, KD, and WCJ.

The another X Factor is rebounding. As mentioned in the previous match ups that were all blowouts the margin was significant, yet this game 1 saw a much closer scoring and rebounding margin. Does this mean we see WCJ back into the starting line up? Or have the Pels figured out a way to stop the inside and outside threats while maintaining some strength on the glass.

Summary

Both teams suffered a round 1 scare of a game 7, while the Pels came through as the underdog in their match up the 1-8 7 game series is surely an indicator that if it can bleed it can be killed.

When all is said and done at the end of this series, I'm predicting a quick 4 gamer unfortunately for the Pels. While they can match the star power part of the 2k equation, their season record and their reboudning disparity are too much to overcome to make this a competitive match up. I see the Lakers through to face the 1-2 Western Conference Finals against Minny.