TT on Odom, that would never work. Odom would kill him off the dribble or shooting threes if he lays back. Tim wound up on him once in the second half and Lamar easily left him in his wake. Besides the Lakers can have TT guard whoever they want - all they have to do is have his man set a screen and Tim will switch. I guess they couldn't have him alone on Kobe because we'd double.
The Lakers are onto this already - they exploited it much more than in game one but haven't tapped its full potential yet. Its going to be hard for the Suns to win another game with TT playing the bulk of the time - D'Antoni is going to have to go with James Jones guarding Walton and Diaw & Marion taking turns on Odom & Brown. That doesn't look very promising given the way JJ has played but putting him in starting lineup and having to depend on him could well turn that around. He'd have to work his butt on on the boards much more than he accustomed to. I like this approach for its future benefit - if JJ can't hack this assignment do we really want to try to keep him around?
Not that I expect D'Antoni to do it - I'm not sure he's noticed how atrocious TT is on screens even though he's botched virtually every single one in approximately the same way. Surely, if he was aware of it he'd not let it go on so long.
To give credit where its due, in the 2nd Q Thomas did jump out at Kobe on one screen and executed a nice trap. It didn't happen again so it looks more like a fluke than a hopeful sign.
The Lakers did a good job of defending Barbosa, his man was funneling him to the waiting bigs rather than trying to cut him off and losing the race. As I've said before, the trouble with Barbs doing his drives from isolation is that the other team can set up for them and in the playoffs they'll figure that out. Some teams did in the regular season. BTW, the pull up shot wasn't there for Leandro either because he wasn't getting clear of his primary defender.
