5 Things: The Others

Last season the Lakers scored 109.5 points per game. LeBron James scored 25 ppg, Russell Westbrook 22.2 and Anthony Davis scored 21.8 which would, when totaled, add up to the tidy sum of 69 ppg over the course of an NBA season. By my math that means we have to account for account 40 more points to bring us up to the scoring potential of last season’s team. Let’s just say that the 3 superstars above will be able to replicate their performance from last season, that they will score roughly the same amount of points despite there being more players of gravity on their squad than last season. Where will those other 40 (or hopefully more) points come from?
The Others.

1. The Other guards. Much has been made of the shot-making potential of the guys we brought in this offseason. Much like last season, really. The Lakers last season brought in guys coming off career seasons from three (Schroder, Wes Matthews) a stretch 5 (Gasol) and saw decent marks from returns KCP and Alex Caruso in terms of efficiency. This season we brought in Kendrick Nunn, Malik Monk and professional shooter Wayne Ellington along with the trade for Russell Westbrook to shore up the guard position. With Russ we got instant intensity and the ability to get to the rim or out on the break. In Nunn and Monk we got guys who have shown themselves to be decent three point shooters albeit in a small sample size. Wayne Ellington is the only proven commodity among the three when it comes to scoring from the outside and his inside game is nascent, at best. As a trio, Nunn, Monk and Ellington averaged 35.9 ppg on teams where they had defined roles. If they can come anything close to that as Lakers our offense will look great. Coupled with the 69 ppg we hope to get from the Trio if they manage, as a group, to average 30 ppg (accounting for fewer minutes since they won’t all be playing 20+mpg every game) that would get us right about to where we stood last season. I don’t think it likely as at least one of those three will be fighting for minutes and you can expect there to be a fairly sizable dip in production for at least one, if not all, of our guards. They each averaged 20+ minutes per game (Nunn at 29 mpg stands to see the biggest decrease). If one slots THT as a guard those numbers from those three will take a bigger hit and put more pressure on the 20 year-old Talen to show off an improved jump shot, or a floater, or something to up his efficiency. In short, I expect the guards to average fewer points than they collectively put up last season. One of the reasons being the flow/super-star driven nature of the Frank Vogel “offense”. The Lakers, as a team, really don’t know where their shots are coming from. For guys like Ellington that’s a killer, professional shooters like Wayne seem to function better when they know where the butter for their bread is coming from. Can the opposite prove true? Of course. Time will tell which way this breaks. Oh yeah, Rajon Rondo. I don’t expect him to play much, I think he’ll be this team’s better version of Jared Dudley. Seeing as he averaged 5.4 ppg last season I’ll be happy if he’s not hurt, racking up some dimes and hitting a couple shots a game. Not offense saving stuff.
   
   Prediction: 25 PPG averaged between the 3, 35 if THT mostly plays at the 2.
2. The Other forwards. We added some big names to the forward spots and, to a man, they’re all getting up there in age for the NBA. Combo guard/forward Talen Horton Tucker goes a long way towards reducing the cumulative age of the forwards on our team at 20 but after that the youngest one is Kent Bazemore at 32. Ariza is next at at 36 and not far behind him is Carmelo Anthony. This trio averaged 30 ppg last season but where I take some hope is that they each are reprising roughly the same role just on a different team. Here again a breakout season from Taken Horton-Tucker could really boost the forward’s scoring fortunes if he can either simply improve upon what he was able to accomplish last season or show us all a little something new. The minutes here will also be impacted by how much LeBron plays at the 4 and so, until we get a better sense of how that will factor in (since, as of preseason game 1, we saw AD at the 4 and LBJ theoretically would have played at the 3) so, depending on Frank’s rotations, one of these guys could essentially sit out every game or so. My theory is Trevor will start on the IL, let him really ease his way into the season. He’s battled several injuries over the last few seasons and I think we’d all rather see him effective in the playoffs rather than come out of the gates hot and fade. Bazemore and Melo ought to have fairly sizable and stable roles.
   
   Prediction: 20 ppg between the 3, 30 if THT mostly plays at the 3.
3. The Other centers. or the only centers, depending on how Frank plays this thing out. The biggest storyline of the Lakers offseason is easily the news that AD is willing to play more (when he talks sounds like a lot more, when Frank talks it sounds like not to much) center. How that shakes out will affect the other line ups on down the roster. More AD at the 5 opens up more minutes for Melo at the 4 backing up LeBron when he either slides back to the 3 or even potentially seeing the return of Carmelo Anthony: starting NBA player. The more we rely on Dwight and DeAndre Jordan to score the worse our offense will look. Both are past their NBA primes, both averaged just over 7 PPG last season and neither has any range to their game. It’s dunks off of lobs and offensive put-backs or it’s nothing. OK, OK, the occasional Dwight Howard three-bomb. Point is, neither of these guys even has much of a traditional low post, back-to-the-basket old school game. They really do rely on the guard setting them up or crashing the glass. So, based on how many minutes AD takes away from this duo it’s hard for me to see even 10 ppg coming from the other Laker centers. If they come close to 15 we’ll have what appears to be an elite offense in the making. 5 more ppg from Dwight and DAJ doesn’t necessarily mean fewer shots for anyone else, just that they’re doing their jobs well providing a paint release for drives or cleaning the offensive glass.
   
   Prediction: 10 ppg…if we’re lucky.
4. What about all the three point shooters we picked up? Frankly, I don’t see us transforming our offense or playing much differently than we did last season. We’re not going to lead the league in 3 point FGA, we’ll be in the top 1/3 most likely. We shot 32 three pointers/game last season, I don’t see that number going up too much. We hit 35.2% of those. If that could creep up over 37% it will help open up the paint a little bit but the honest truth is that, with LeBron and Russ handling the ball 90+% of the time, teams will dare us to make threes. They are not going to open up the paint for those guys to breeze to the rim from rim-rattling dunks or crowd-juicing lobs. It’s not going to happen no matter what kind of line up we trot out. The Lakers will need to prove that they can hit three pointers at a high clip to alter ay of the tried and true stratagems against Russ and The King.
5. But won’t AD playing at the five make our offense better? In theory, yes. More Davis means less Dwight or DAJ and so that means a more dynamic offense. But AD likes to shoot inefficient step backs and off-balance twos. A lot. Couple that with Russ who is not a knockdown shooter and LeBron who can get hot from the outside but is far better at scoring in the paint and we have a lot of guys who like to play an older brand of basketball, which suits me fine, just that we’re seemingly built for a newer brand. That’s where Frank and his new extension come into play. While not relegating him to lame-duck status Rob didn’t cement his status as long-term future coach of the LA Lakers, either. Frank is going to need to show a little something more, especially on offense, than he has in seasons past.
   
   So, if you add up my predictions we seem to have the potential to score an amazing and near NBA record 124 ppg this season! Don’t bet on it, my predictions are based on feel and notion as much as anything else and we haven’t even seen the full team play, yet. It’s going to be hard for each group to hit my predictions simply because there likely won’t be enough shots to go around. For a little dose of reality we didn’t even crack the 100 point mark in our first pre-season game. For another dose of reality the top scoring teams in NBA history are all from before the 90s. In fact during this, the glorious offensive renaissance of basketball, no team from the 2000’s cracks the top 50 list except for two: The Milwaukee Bucks from last season and the season before. Yeah, that’s right, that misbegotten group of not the New Jersey Nets, or the high octane Mike D’Antoni Phoenix teams or the Shaq/Kobe Lakers are the only modern NBA team to crack the top 50 highest scoring teams in the regular season.
   
   That’s because they do it with defense as much as offense. Which is exactly what we better do. More on that point next time.
   
   Go Lakers.