Written by: Alex Regla, Mike Garcia, and Cranjis McBasketball

The Lakers are currently 3-5 through the first few weeks of the season. Is this the start you expected?

Alex:

Prior to the season I predicted the Lakers to be .500 through their first ten games, so their current win/loss record is right along where I expected it to be.

While the projection may be confused for pessimism, in reality there were enough contextual factors at play that hinted at a slow start out of the gates for the purple and gold.

For one, the team had significant roster turnover (4th most of any team), which included the daunting task of implementing LeBron James within the team with the third youngest average age (24.5). The Lakers also simply were dealt a tough hand in terms of the difficulty of their opening stretch of games.

Among the eight games the Lakers have played, five (San Antonio Spurs twice) have come against playoff teams. The Denver Nuggets, who currently are 7-1 (the singular loss coming at the hands of the Lakers) missed the playoffs on the final calendar day of last season. Including Denver, five of those eight teams also ranked within the top 13 of point differential last season, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Besides simply being good basketball teams, their first eight opponents also have the added advantage of continuity. Excluding the Spurs and the Phoenix Suns, the Lakers’ have gone up against teams whose nuclei have remained relatively intact spanning back at the very least, from last season.

The combination of trying to build chemistry and rotations on the go, all while matching up against stiff competition, was a brutal task for a team still trying to find their footing.

Mike:

I’d would have liked to see 5-3, as they are currently 3-5, but this is the start I expected. Half the roster has been turned over, and there are extremes of both ends with young players and tenured veterans alike. The Lakers’ pace has been amongst the top in the league for awhile, but as the season has gone on, it has trended downward. According to nba.com/stats, they’re currently ranked in fourth place, with a pace of 106.4 with Atlanta at first at 109.1. Last year, despite the injuries to Zo and Ingram, the Lakers were ranked third, but with a pace of 101.0.

Another common theme from last season is the Lakers being a league leader in points in the paint. Currently, they are ranked first at 52.1 points per game. Last season, they were also ranked first at 48 points in the paint, per game.

Tim/Cranjis:

My expectations were less about record and more about process. This is my focus in general, because the offensive/defensive/net ratings and wins/loses are so driven partly by luck and a team making or missing shots in such a small sample.

My expectations were based on the roster’s talent levels based on our player grades at BBall Index. Based on Luke Walton’s performance as a coach in our Optimization Rates at getting the most of his roster, I’d expect the results to be lower in general than the talent grades would suggest. Here are the team’s grades in each category (based on player grades weighted by projected minutes heading into the season), with some notes on performance in related areas thus far (still on small samples).

Perimeter Shooting: 22nd team talent ranking. The team is 19th in 3PT percent so far, and compared to shooting last season shooting based on 3-point openness, they’ve scored 0.8 points better than expected. So as a whole, they’ve shot about as well as we should have expected going into the year.

Off Ball Movement: 12th. The Lakers are 1st in created points over expectation (CPOE) on cuts from screens (the flex cuts and UCLA back screens they run account for these) and 6th in CPOE on flash cuts (player cuts from perimeter, gets pass on the way, and finishes at the rim), but are 30th in off-screen scoring efficiency, scoring less than half of what the average team is scoring per possession on those attempts on 6.1 possessions per game. Overall, they’ve been about where they were expected to be.

One on One: 15th. LA is 26th iso efficiency so far, but have excelled in pick and roll and handoff plays. Overall, the team has just about met expectations.

Finishing: 1st. The Lakers are 4th in efficiency at the rim in half court situations and 3rd in the percentage of their shots coming at the rim. And that goes up when you incorporate transition. This is about where we expected them to be.

Roll Gravity: 4th. The Lakers are 2nd in efficiency so far on roll man possessions, so about where we thought they’d be.

Playmaking: 17th. The Lakers have several elite guys with Lonzo, LeBron, and Rondo, but aren’t a great top to bottom playmaking team. The Lakers are 18th in assist percentage so far as a team.

Post Play: 6th. LeBron & Ingram have been good, but McGee has gotten way more opportunities here than he should and hasn’t converted on those chances (his efficiency has been worse than 96% of qualified players). The Lakers have been 10th as a team in the post and 3rd on putbacks (which factors into this post category), so overall have been about what was expected.

Perimeter Defense: 26th. LA has been 22nd ranked in efficiency against jumpers. And with the high volume of blow by’s that we’ve seen so far, this seems about right. Maybe a couple spots high.

Interior Defense: 12th. The Lakers have been 15th in efficiency on shots at the rim, so about what we expected.

Offensive Rebounding: 2nd. Actual offensive rebounding percentage (garbage time removed) has been 19th. This is a lot worse than expected.

Defensive Rebounding: 2nd. Actual defensive rebounding percentage (garbage time removed) has been 24th. Just like with offensive rebounding, this is a lot worse than expected.

So to summarize, the Lakers have performed so far almost right where the expectation would have been based on last season’s talent grades. I’d argue that the Lakers haven’t substantially over performed anywhere. The only areas where the team has been a lot worse than expected has been with rebounding, where the team has been awful compared to expectations on both ends of the court.

This team has overall been about what the talent would indicate it should be, or potentially a little less once we consider rebounding.

What kind changes would you like to see on the defensive end?

Mike:

JaVale McGee has been a godsend in terms of paint protection. However, I still see a lot of mistakes along the perimeter. When it’s a combination of Hart, Zo, Ingram, and Kuzma out there, the team looks like it’s on a string defensively, and that has carried over from the chemistry developed from last season. Mix in LeBron, Rondo, and McGee, and there are loose ends to tie up, especially along the perimeter. Despite JaVale McGee being tied at fourth in contested 2-point shots per game, the Lakers still give up 57 points in the paint to the opponent.

The Lakers are 26th in the league at field goal percentage against at 48 percent. They’re also 26th worst in the league at 3-point field goal percentage against at 38.3 percent.

Luke Walton often talks about defending without fouling, and the Lakers are just as bad there, 23rd in the league, giving up 26.4 free throws per game to the opponent.

Improvement would really show with general field goal percentage against, all over the floor. McGee has been an anchor, but at 13 shot contests per game with the Lakers still giving up 57 points in the paint to opponents, means there is way too much dribble penetration given up by the team. Dribble penetration opens up shooters as well, which would explain the high opponent 3-point field goal percentage against.

There’s a lot of work needed, not just in terms of perimeter isolation defense, but pick-and-roll defense, switching, when to double team, and rotating out to shooters. A lot of that has to do with communication and building the chemistry on defense.

Tim/Cranjis:

I could write an entire article around this one question, but I’ll keep it to the top 3 changes I’d like to see. And I want to note that each of these observations are from 2+ years, not just 8 games.

1. Defensive Rebounding: The team needs to do a better job boxing out and scouting.

Boxing out isn’t a difficult technical procedure. I’ve found it, and how well it is executed, to be mostly about awareness and attention. And I’ve seen firsthand that it can improve within just days. It starts by requiring the coaching staff to be aware that there is a problem and aware of its link to defensive performance.

It then requires the staff to hold players accountable and pay attention to how players perform in this regard. This takes more effort, but is as simple as one person tracking box out percentages by watching film and giving coaches a sheet after every practice and game that shows the percentages for each player.

I’ve personally done that at the college level and seen how much of a difference it makes. When a player knows that the team’s box out percentage is 70% but they’re at 30%, and they know boxing out is important to their team and coaches, they take pride in that and do a good job. If they coaches are aware and buy into its importance, and they have the team’s buy-in, the play will improve.

We’re talking about players who put in hours and hours of work every day into being the best they can be, so this small extra effort shouldn’t be difficult once you pay attention to it (and in my team’s case, it wasn’t).

The other part of this is scouting. During the regular video scouting done by team staff, taking note to how many players the opponents like to crash the boards with can help inform how many Laker players should crash and how many should look to run in transition. Ideally, you keep just enough back to win on the boards and still have players getting out for breaks.

If the team does what it did against the Mavs, and have four players crash for rebounds while Dallas brought only one player, LA is cutting down on transition opportunities in an unnecessary way. Pick a number to start with, and have it evolve as the game progresses based on how the opponents behaves.

2. Positioning: Shell positioning and helping

If you played middle school or higher level basketball, you’ve probably run shell drills. You put 5 offensive players on the perimeter: two corners, two wings, and one at the top of the key. As the ball is slowly passed around, the defense moves to where they should be positioned, almost like being pulled on a string in a beautiful rhythm.

Once you get that down with quicker passing, you add in organized cuts. You then pin down or flare screens. Then ball screens. Finally, you run it live. And this positioning is universally standard, just with your exact positioning differing by 1-2 small steps in either direction depending on how well your man shoots.

Part of this is also understanding when and how to help. Where is the help coming from, when does it come, and how much? Are we doubling the post, digging down, or leaving our post defender on an island? Does the help come from the back side, strong side corner (never), or top? Does that come on the catch or on the first dribble? These are the questions high school, college, and NBA teams decide for their team principles (and then will adjust against certain players). This set of variables boils down to “this is Laker defense,” making it far less complex than it seems.

This all hits at where players should be on the court. It’s pretty simple, but can make a big difference in defending the ball by being in the right place at the right time. And if over-helping, which the team has done a lot so far, they’ll be in worse position to recover and contest on the perimeter, which may be leading to the team’s 27th ranked 3pt defense in half court situations.

Just like with boxing out, this isn’t particularly difficult (kids literally do it), but it requires attention and accountability to hold form with it.

3. Adjustments: Can Luke play chess and not checkers?

In the recent win against the Mavs, the Lakers were picked apart with the same plays and actions over and over. When JaVale McGee is defending the screener in a ball screen, the Lakers have had him playing drop coverage with the ball handler’s man looking to chase and recover.

This concedes two things: the ball handler being sagged off of in a way that allows open pull ups, and the screener being left alone.

If those pull ups are for long 2s, the Lakers can live with that. But 3-point pull ups aren’t ideal. Thankfully, there aren’t too many players that have the tendency and accuracy to make LA pay on these.

The screener being left alone is handled in many cases by them popping and looking to shoot. But for non-shooting bigs, or if you have great shooters around the big that you want to get open, using this opportunity to be left alone by setting another screen (this time off-ball) to free up a shooter can be very dangerous. That two-on-one situation garners open shots in many situations, and the Lakers felt this quite a bit against Dallas on Wednesday.

After the second time of Dallas doing this in two minutes, Luke should probably be making an adjustment. Dallas’ behavior clearly indicated that they identified a Laker tactic they wanted to take advantage of, and the result of that was open three-pointers almost at-will.

The Lakers can move to playing chess and not checkers by making the adjustment to the adjustment. They can hard hedge and recover (which concedes a slip/roll), by switch (exposes McGee to get driven by), can have the shooter’s man play the high side and make life difficult for the shooter to get around the screen, or that same player can try to run into the screen early to draw an illegal screen.

It’s a lot easier for opponents to attack LA’s coverages when they know they’ll do the same thing every time, so look out for similar abuse of LA’s predictability in the future if Luke doesn’t take a set forward that he hasn’t taken in two years so far (and many coaches struggle with).

Other areas I won’t cover but want to mention: switching technique, closeout technique, and individual perimeter work at staying in front (Hart has gotten worse at this in his second year, which is a huge red flag).

Alex:

The Lakers are a whisker away from being 15th in the league in opponent’s finishing efficiency within four feet of the rim. A possible encouraging sign given the team’s roster construction, yet that becomes muddied as they are allowing the 26th highest amount of attempts at the basket and are dead last in efficiency when you look at opposing shots at the rim with post-ups removed.

This is almost entirely due to the team’s horrid perimeter defense.

The Lakers’ guards and wings have continuously gotten scorched in their point of attack defense, allowing their matchups to both collapse the defense and wreck havoc in the paint and the perimeter.

While there are several, the Lakers’ main culprit of their defensive breakdowns on the perimeter thus far possibly has been fan favorite: Josh Hart.

Hart is currently allowing a disastrous six points more than an average player would be expected to in isolation situations. Often getting absolutely blown by with a simple change of direction, or crossover, Hart has allowed straight line drives to the rim with regularity.

This possible deficiency in lateral quickness, flawed technique, is also seen in his poor spot up and off-ball data. When he has defended spot up opportunities, Hart is allowing 5.7 more points than is expected. In off-screen plays he is giving up another five.

A possible solution to this is simply getting him off of primary creators/guards/wings. While he gives a ton of effort, there is a technique flaw that is blowing up the team’s coverages. There is the possibility the opposition will hunt him out via a high ball screen late in the game, so it may simply come down to Luke Walton realizing not to sub him in during a late game defensive hold if the possibility of him getting trapped on an island is probable.

On the other side of the coin, the team has been saved of sorts with center JaVale McGee’s impressive backline defense.

The big man, also commonly referred to as “The Grinch that saved the Lakers’ perimeter lapses,” currently has a season DPOE of -16.3, second best among centers. This mark is tied for 11th among all players this season, according to BBall Index’s database.

Despite the Lakers being ranked 7th in offensive rating, it could still improve. What changes would you like to see implemented?

Tim/Cranjis:

This again comes down to process for me. I’m pleased to see the team’s offense performing despite organization and deployment I’d argue are holding them back, but for long-term sustained offensive success we’re going to need to see improvements in several areas.

Transition Offense: The team is getting into transition a TON, which is fantastic. It’s a large driver of their expected points per possession being sixth in the league, based on their offensive play type breakdown. While their pace has dropped below first, their percentage of possessions in transition is first in the NBA and better than any team’s volume percent in the Synergy era.

But while the team is getting a lot of these opportunities, they haven’t been particularly good in those chances. LA’s transition efficiency ranks under Luke have been 24th, 22nd, and now 20th. We’ve seen some missed calls, but complaints about that in a game or two are less meaningful as the sample size grows.

What the Lakers can change is their organization. Luke has talked about installing his principles, and we’ve seen that in action. It’s been fairly standard transition offense. LA is looking to have a rim runner and have players fill lanes. They have their plans to attack a 2 on 1, 3 on 2, etc. set up. And the style they’ve chosen to deploy is very much how basketball has looked for many teams over the past decade or two.

But over the past couple years, teams are recognizing the value of open corner 3-pointers and are having players run to those corners in transition. Rather than a 3 on 2 resulting in some passes between the middle and wings and hopefully a layup/dunk, a 3 on 2 now has 2 players in the corners and the ball driving to the rim, resulting in an open dunk or corner 3. LA may want to explore this as a possibility to help raise the efficiency of their 20th ranked transition offense. While they aren’t a great 3-point shooting team, they’re certainly good enough to take advantage of open corner 3s and rack up some extra points.

Secondary Break: This isn’t a fast break, but encompasses the early clock attacks a team deploys before the defense is fully set. The Lakers have players in LeBron and Ingram that are dangerous if they can get downhill, so I’d like to see flat screens (where the screener goes to the defender’s back, not side) to allow them to start barreling to the rim at full force and either getting thunderous dunks or forcing help in the paint, opening up corner 3s for teammates.

In addition, quick pin downs, flare screens, and pin-in screens off-ball are particularly useful in secondary break situations when the defense is on its heels. This would be an easy way to get open 3-point looks on the wings and in the corners.

Half Court/Mid Clock: I mentioned earlier that the Lakers had the 6th highest expected efficiency when looking at their play type breakdown. When you just look at the way their half court offense is attacking, this drops to dead last.

A main reason for this is that the team is often attacking a set defense with no advantage created by screening. Wednesday, the Lakers ran 0.8 actions per possession. 0.25 per possession if your remove post ups and ball screens. Those don’t compare favorably to the 1.4 and 0.8 averages I’ve calculated form the other teams I’ve tracked.

When you break that down, LA is running 0.55 posts or ball screens per play, compared to 0.6 for the other teams. That’s about the same.

The real difference comes in the other actions, like flare screens, pin downs, flex cuts, and the other 30 possible actions I could rattle off. Over 110+ offensive possessions per game, that could mean 60+ less actions (read: 60+ less chances to pressure the defense and score) per game.

LA has made it work so far by beating a set defense, but that’s not a sustainable solution. Their individual talent has kept them afloat, but that’s unlikely to continue at current levels of efficiency.

They need to run a higher volume of plays, more variance in plays, and more complexity in plays (which still isn’t rocket science or even as hard as football concepts). Those are all issues, but the volume is the most surprising and largest concern. Running nothing at all is not something we see yield success at any level in organized basketball.

Late Clock: The last part of offense is what you do late-clock. For my team in college, that was everything with under 6 seconds left. If you get to 6 on the clock and aren’t mid-attack, you need a go-to action that everyone on the team knows to do every time. This will limit the late-clock Lance isolations and McGee post isolations that we’ve been seeing too much of.

It could be a spread pick and roll with a flare screen weak side. It could be a post up for LeBron/Kuzma/Ingram with a split cut ball side and a flare screen weak side. Both simple yet effective late-clock options that can be run with any lineup the Lakers have on the court. They just need to take 15 minutes one time to pick something and run with it.

Alex:

I personally would love to see more off-ball movement in all senses.

The team is putting up a ton of points in large part to their ridiculous volume of transition opportunities, but could become truly deadly with a more refined half court offense.

The team has the fortunate benefit of having three elite playmakers in James, Lonzo Ball and Rajon Rondo; yet through the help of some unimaginative playcalling, have settled for 61 isolation possessions thus far according to Synergy. The team is yielding only 0.67 points per possession in these opportunities, ranked 26th in the NBA.

Where the team is doing rather well is in their off-ball actions. The Lakers are currently sixth in the league in points per possession on cuts (including dump offs) (1.35) and third in hand offs (1.2 points per possession). Unfortunately, the team is not utilizing this strength.

The Lakers are only 14th in the league in frequency of cuts in their offense and 28th in the frequency of hand offs.

More of these actions in the half court, and less stationary isolation plays, will create both easier looks and make the team less predictable on offense in late game situations.

Mike:

One of the changes I’d like to see implemented already occured against the Mavs. The Lakers as a whole were rebounding as an entire team. Unfortunately, this cut down on fast break points and breakaway opportunities. It took the team a lot of effort just to nearly tie the Mavs in total team rebounding.

Knowing how to play the last 3:00 minutes of a game is so important. The team has given up multiple opportunities to close games, putting themselves in bad situations with late-clock issues and isolation situations. There has to be a better way to keep the foot on the gas and put the defense on their heels, even when they think the game is over.

What would be signs of improvement and upward trend with offense or defense to look out for?

Alex:

Lessening the amount of attempts at the rim would be a good indicator that the defense is rounding to form. Fewer drives to the rim will also alter the likelihood of sending their opponents to the free throw line, which has been the team’s achilles heel through the first few weeks of the season (24th in opponent’s free throw rate).

On the other end, the team continues to steer away from the three-point line. Currently in possession of the 22nd lowest rate behind the arc in the league, there has been hesitation evident in the players to let it fly when given the opportunity.

While overpassing is also a factor, schematically instilling, creating, and attempting more threes instead of long twos (18th in frequency of shots outside of 14 feet) should yield more valuable results, thus making for a more efficient offense considering their devastating amount of looks at the rim.

Tim/Cranjis:

The signs of improvement in the areas I mentioned above will be fairly self evident. Either they add organization to their offense in those areas or they don’t. Either they start boxing out and positioning better or they don’t.

Statistical signs will be seen in the team’s shot profile moving forward, their half court expected efficiency based on play type distribution, transition efficiency, and likely over time will flow into their overall efficiency numbers and win record.

Mike:

One sign of improvement that would help a lot is just trying to neutralize the rebound differential. Right now the team averages 44.5 total rebounds per game while giving up 47.9 to opponents. At least three of the games had the Lakers sorely beaten on the offensive glass alone. Despite all of the defensive issues, neutralizing rebound differential would have probably added two wins to the current record.

Another sign of improvement is general interior field goal percentage and 3-point field goal percentage against. Both numbers are way too high, at 48 percent and 38.3 percent respectively. Any kind of downward trend from those numbers, along with defensive rebounding, would be huge.

Reducing the number of points in the paint to the opponent would be another marker. Despite the Lakers turning the ball over 14.8 times per game (roughly mid-pack in the NBA), they give up 57 points in the paint, just 2.2 points away from being worst in the league. They give up way too much dribble penetration and easy post looks in the half court, then it opens up the shooters.

Despite how bad the defense has looked statistically through 8 games, the Lakers have been right there in every single one. This team out-offenses their defense, but that isn’t the identity that Luke Walton wants for the team.

 

Statistics courtesy of: Synergy | NBA.com | Cleaning the Glass. Data helped compiled by Ben Holz. Image by Akshay Ram.