Summer has brought on the dog days and the new CBA has somewhat dulled player movement to the degree we’ve seen I. Summer’s past. Since I’m not seeing king happening on the trade front I thought now would be a good time to talk defense.
The following assumes decent health for the team overall and isn’t accounting for player not currently on the roster. Those are exercises for the imagination, not reality.
1) What might our defensive identity look like? The Laker defense has 2 main issues, besides limiting the opponent’s scoring, “hiding” DLo effectively and reducing wear and tear on LeBron James. Of the 2 hiding DLo is the bigger challenge. With his decent size and average strength and overall speed (although he is quicker than most give him credit for) a 2-3 zone where he’s not the point of attack defender (when possible) where DLo and LBJ are responsible for the corner zones and AD is in the middle makes sense, especially if Vando is a starter and pressures half court, or even full at times. Having LBJ man a corner zone means he can maybe crash the glass a little more and get the offense going off the break in addition to potentially reducing his responsibilities on that end. A 2-3 zone w/AD in the middle could lead to rebounding issues, which we had plenty of last season as we all know, but you have to give up something in the NBA and the zone helps reduce individual break downs, keeps pressure on the perimeter and at the rim, and if we battle we can minimize the impact of giving up offensive rebounds.
2) Why not man-to-man or switch everything? In short because we lack the horses to run that race. DLo, Reaves, Rui and even LeBron at this point are fairly one-dimensional and all of them have pretty glaring weaknesses on D. DLo simply underwhelms, feels like he could be decent/average but the short version is he is who he is. Reaves can get bullied off his man, Rui is game but lacks the instincts and awareness to maximize his side and speed like the elite two way SFs do. LBJ is old. Very old, he’s not going to put forth Olympic effort every game. So we need to get creative in how we deploy him in D to save him for offense. Man to man defense only will see all of the players above get abused in various situations and plays. Switch everything requires players we don’t have and chemistry I haven’t seen develop, yet. Vogel had a keen mind for defense and got Kuzma to buy in and had Caruso and Green as fail safes. This team has Vando, maybe Vincent and they’ve never played together. I’m not saying we won’t see any man or switching but I don’t think it should be our main defensive identity.
3) Reducing three point efficiency has to be key. I don’t necessarily mind giving up a lot of 3 point shots, I do want to reduce 3 point makes. With so many guys being able to get shots off in the blink of an eye it feels sillier every season to say we’ll contain shooters. Contesting shots at a high level feels more realistic. Since we’re not the tallest/fastest team we need to be better about defensive positioning and reacting, not having sub par defenders get abused off screen actions is another reason I favor a zone as our main go-to defense identity.
4) AD featured. Going zone hells feature AD on defense and maybe helps him get a DPOY trophy. This is not really important but anything that highlights overall defensive performance w/AD in the middle of it all can’t be bad. If AD is in the convo for DPOY it means the defense isn’t awful on a basic level.
5) Identifying our best 2 way lineups. This one is crucial because, based on reputation, we don’t have a ton of two way players. We’re probably going to lean on Vando and Vincent to ball hawk and pressure playmakers on the perimeter as well as being the first helpers. We’re going to have to hope guys like Hayes and Reaves can take a step forward and address individual concerns. Reaves could stand to add some muscle and work on his ability to use his length to disrupt the dribble. Hayes and AD could be a dominant defensive tandem, in theory, but Hayes needs to bit foul and be better at hedging and his recovery defense. There are other guys who can step into a bigger role if these 2 can’t rise to the challenge but for all concerned it would be best if they found another level. As it stands today I’d say my top defensive lineup would be Vincent, Vando, Rui, LeBron and AD. I’d love to see Hayes or Reaves supplant LeBron, though. We’re going to need a lot from The King on offense and it’s simply unrealistic to expect him to put forth high effort on both ends for 82 and be fresh for the playoffs.
What are your thoughts on a 2-3 zone as a main identity, not the be all end all but the primary option, and your favorite defensive 5?
Aloha Jamie, I may not be as concerned by the defense as a lot of folks. Although the center position does concern me. We were shredded when AD rested. The first part of the year we had one of the better defensive rankings in the league but we often found ourselves 10 to 14 points behind by the end of the first quarter. When we went with the offensive line up that stopped happening. I think that Vando and Gabe will be big for us if they can stay healthy. Last year we simply did not have guys to bring in when we really needed tough defense. I’m hoping that growth from some of our younger guys will help our defense. Last year Austin’s defense started to improve, towards the end of the year, hopefully that trend continues. Rui is actually a pretty good on ball defender. His problem was more about getting lost in his rotations and he found himself chasing the play at times. Fortunately that is something that is easier to correct than on ball ability. His defensive rating was 113.9 as a starter, while the teams rating was 118 over that stretch. I also have high hopes for Max. He did look very good at times on defense, he made young guy mistakes but NBA defense is the last to develop. Hopefully he will be more consistent. Woods defense was better than advertised when he played the 4. While the sample size was small the front line of LeBron. AD and Wood were plus 22 per 100 possession. Jackson isn’t bulky enough to bang but hopefully he can learn to use that athleticism to do a better job of protecting the rim. This team has a lot of fire power so if we can improve the defense some we can be dangerous. Still hoping we can find a banger at some point.
I’m ho early not too worried at all about scoring the ball, stopping the other team is a big concern for me.
Agree that inserting Rui (finally) “fixed” a lot of issues. Having Vando and Vincent could propel us towards something special.