7 seconds or LA-LA

I had wanted to wait for Nash to come off the DL before saying something about Mike D'Antoni coaching the Lakers, but that seems a while off, so before the iron goes completely cold...

In the first article I read about the firing of Mike Brown and hiring of D'Antoni, it said that Mike Brown was trying to run the Princeton offense -- with a team that had 2 bigs (one of whom needs to be near the basket in order to be effective**) and no one (except Nash) in the projected starting 5 who could shoot the 3***.  WAT.  These are not guys who can effectively run the Princeton offense (with, I think, the exception of Pau Gasol, who is IMO an ideal big man to put at the top of the key).

Even if D'Antoni runs the "right" offense with this team, I think it will be extremely difficult for him to overcome the following problems:

1. Howard has been worse than ever at the free throw line, and
2. This Lakers team is not very deep (just look at the bench's +/- numbers to see that they're regularly being outperformed by opponent benches).

** To be extremely generous to Brown, he apparently (see last paragraph in this section) made the decision before the Howard trade... but then again, it was also before they had Nash.

*** Kobe is a career .337 shooter on 3's.  That's not even in the top-250 all-time, and lower than 6th man's Antawn Jamison's career .346 %.  He's horrible for a shooting guard, but we have a perception that he's "not bad" because he's made some 3's in big games.  Artest is a career .341 on 3's.  

By contrast, Vince Carter (currently of the Mavericks) is the 50th best active player at .3738.  R