The Lakers’ chances of winning their 18th NBA championship this season will likely depend on whether guards Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves can develop into a championship backcourt both offensively and defensively.
Early signs are promising as coach Redick has implemented schemes that take better advantage of Luka’s and Austin’s high basketball IQ and the two players have responded with improved defensive effort and performance. Redick’s new defensive scheme is designed to trap, rotate, and swarm any ball handler who tries to switch hunt a vulnerable defender like Austin Reaves or Luka Doncic. Lakers will no longer leave defenders on an island.
To make the new trap, rotate, and swarm anti-switch hunting defense work, the Lakers have also had to change how their centers defend pick-and-rolls. Lakers centers are no longer playing traditional drop coverage defense.
Instead, JJ wants his centers to be proactive rather than reactive, which means hedging, trapping, or blitzing the ball handler instead of switching and then trusting their swarming defensive rotations to create turnovers.
Redick wants his defense to be both the Lakers’ identity as a team and the engine that drives their offense. He wants his guards and wings trapping, rotating, and swarming and his centers attacking and intimidating.
The evolution of the Lakers’ defense under Redick has been amazing. After playing around with switch-everything and double-big schemes, JJ has now committed to an attacking trapping, rotating, and swarming team defense.
So can Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves become a championship defensive backcourt? Let’s see what analytics says about the Lakers’ new defense and see whether their ‘playoff health over playoff seeding’ strategy is working.
What Does Analytics Say About Lakers’ New Defense?
The Los Angeles Lakers’ sudden development into one of the best defensive teams in the league despite having traded DPOY candidate Anthony Davis for dynamo offensive superstar Luka Doncic has the NBA entire befuddled.
Rookie head coach JJ Redick deserves all the credit in the world for the dramatic emergence of Lakers’ defense as one of if not the best defense in the league as does LeBron James, who’s the L.A.’s new Director of Defense.
How ironic that Redick’s first major coaching breakthrough was on defense and not offense? Adding Finney-Smith, Goodwin, Vincent, and Vanderbilt certainly helped but it’s JJ’s genius moves that transformed L.A.’s defense.
From February 1st, when they traded for Luka Doncic, through March 8th, which is when LeBron James was injured, the Lakers posted an elite team defensive rating of 107.7, the #1 defensive rating in the entire league.
During this period, the Lakers successfully shut down elite scorers like Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic, Anthony Edwards, Naz Reid, Karl-Anthony Towns, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Devin Booker, and Kevin Durant.
While the team had an elite 107.7 team defensive rating after trading for Luka and before LeBron getting injured, Luka Doncic posted an elite 106.3 (#4) while Austin Reaves posted a respectable 108.8 (#8) defensive rating.
While neither Luka or Austin are elite 1-on-1 defensive players, both are extremely intelligent and have great on-court anticipation. Redick’s new defensive scheme protects them and they’ve responded with great effort.
While their defense has slipped to 5th since LeBron was injured, the Lakers will finally be 100% healthy when they play the Bulls on Saturday night. Finally healthy, Lakers are now looking to lock up the #2 seed in the West.
How Is ‘Playoff Health Over Seeding’ Strategy Working?
The Lakers gamble to prioritize playoff health over playoff seeding appears to have paid off. After finally finishing a grueling 3 back-to-backs in a row and 6 games in 8 days stretch, the Lakers are finally close to 100% healthy.
The #4 Los Angeles Lakers are essentially tied with the #3 Denver Nuggets with 26 losses, 1 loss behind the #2 Houston Rockets, 1 loss ahead of the #5 Memphis Grizzlies, and 3 losses ahead of the #6 Golden State Warriors.
The Lakers already hold tie breakers over the Nuggets, Grizzlies, Warriors, Clippers, Wolves, Kings, and Suns. They have 2 games left against the Houston Rockets and need to win both of those games to win tie breaker.
While the Lakers are entering their 13-game stretch run healthier than they’ve been all season with both Luka and LeBron rested and ready to go, the Nuggets’ Jokic and Murray are both still struggling with injuries.
The Lakers remaining schedule has tough games against Grizzlies, Rockets (2), Warriors, Pacers, and Thunder (2). The Nuggets remaining schedule includes Rockets (2) , Bucks, Pacers, Timberwolves, Warriors, and Grizzlies.
Heading into the regular season stretch run, expect the Los Angeles Lakers to continue to play their normal starting lineup of Luka Doncic at 1, Austin Reaves at 2 , Rui Hachimura at 3, LeBron James at 4, and Jaxson Hayes at 5. Healthy, the Lakers will likely expand their 9-man rotation to a 10-man rotation with Gabe Vincent backing the 1, Jordan Goodwin the 1, Dalton Knecht the 3, Dorian Finney-Smith the 4, and Jarred Vanderbilt the 5.
Ideally, a 100% healthy #4 Los Angeles Lakers should be able to win enough games down the stretch to overtake both the #2 Houston Rockets and #3 Denver Nuggets and lock up the #2 seed in the Western Conference.
Don’t forget LBJ is a terrific shooter as well.