(This post was written early March 8th but delayed because the GameFlows from March 7th disappeared right after I finished it. Hopefully it'll come back, otherwise you'll have to take my word for it.)

Well, it's hard to say, maybe the Lakers would've won with me coaching. But to revisit my last post, check out the GameFlow from tonight's game.

I enjoy dissecting these things to try to figure out the substition rules. In this case Phil came up with a much simpler system than my rambling thoughts, even without Turiaf.

He broke the team into three groups with Farmar as an outlier (play yourself out of that doghouse, rookie).

Big Men

Turiaf wasn't available at all, ouch.

Phil's solution for the PF and C spots was to have exactly two of Kwame, Bynum, and Cook on the floor. Can't argue with that, and a nice easy pattern to spot.

Point Guard

The next thing that jumps out is that one of Smush and Shammond was always on the floor, so there's your point guard.

The one exception is when Farmar was briefly in, Smush has to slide over to SG (being a few inches taller).

SG/SF

That leaves SG/SF, the tweener spots the Lakers were really weak in tonight. Phil's solution: there were always two of Evans, Vujacic and McKie in.

Again the one exception was Farmar, who got two brief stints paired with Evans (the only legitimate GF), pushing Smush down here to SG when needed.

Bravo, Phil. And not a bad job by the backups (it's too bad they'll probably never live up to the expectations they set with their two runs in this beautiful GameFlow.)

Today's photographic nomination is in Animals:

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