JJ Redick said the Lakers executed their one-through-four switching "less than 10 percent of the time" despite drilling down on it in practices and their pregame meeting. He said they had a productive conversation at today's practice and everyone is on the same page now: pic.twitter.com/0P4cB9JQgF
— Jovan Buha (@jovanbuha) October 5, 2024
Major Change: JJ Wants Lakers’ Defense to Switch Everything 1 to 4
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October 6, 2024 2 Comments
Anybody who has ever played basketball understands how much easier it is to defend on the perimeter when you switch everything. I’ve long believed that the Lakers should be switching on screens from anybody at any position except the center.
This is the first news we have had of specific defensive strategies we can expect from JJ Redick. I love the idea of switching everything on screens from 1 through 4. Makes it much easier to stay in front of your defender and easier to defend against 3PA off of screens. Works well when you have an elite shot blocker like AD anchoring the defense too.
The other big benefit of switching 1 thru 4 is you eliminate the situations where the ball handler gets his defender on his hip due to the switch and gets an easy midrange jumper or floater in the key. Switching picks in these situations will eliminate many of the situations where ball handlers are able to penetrate and break the defense. This is major difference between how Vogel and Ham defended on the perimeter.
It will interesting to see if the Lakers can fix this for tonight’s game. It should be something every Lakers fan should have their eye on tonight. The other big defensive question is how will JJ use AD? Will we see a change from Vogel’s and Ham’s frustrating drop coverage strategy or will we see JJ allowing AD to be more aggressive? Good stuff from JJ already.
https://x.com/LakerTom/status/1842961004118069427