Aloha,
Last night was yet another painful game to watch. Defensively we did a decent job in the first half but fell apart defensively in the 2nd. We did to PG what you want to do, kept him out of rhythm. But we began to double him in the 4th, way to soon. He didn’t even have to find his groove because we sent Malik before he even did anything with the ball. Now I don’t know if that’s on Frank or Malik but We never waited to see if he could find his rhythm and beat us. But those early doubles killed us. A simple pass or 2 led to wide open 3’s. That hurt even more than all the missed free throws.
Our biggest issues as a team is that we have not been able to establish an identity as a defensive or offensive team. Injuries have played a part for sure but one wonders who we are. After holding the Clips down in the first half we played more of an offensive unit, especially after THT got in foul trouble and gave up 66 points in the 2nd half. We scored ourselves but couldn’t find a defense when we needed it most.
Our offense since Frank arrived has been, give it a star and get out of the way. Which was okay because we had a top defense that kept us in games. But we brought in offense and either traded or let our defenders walk. Now we have more fire power but we still have the give it a star offense. If we are going to become a great offense we need to start utilizing the scorers we brought in. So far every shooter we have brought in over the last 3 years haven’t lived up to expectations because they never get enough touches or shots to find a rhythm. If we are not going to start moving bodies and then he ball we might as well go with out best defenders and hope for the best.
Now help maybe on the way. Trevor is practicing now. We could go small with a front line of LeBron, AD and Trevor. This could give us enough defensive presence to be able to hide lesser defenders like Ellington or Monk at the
2. But unless we actually involve them in the offense it’s not going to help much on the offensive end.
For me the jury is still out on LeBron, he’s been in and out of the line up so it’s understandable that he hasn’t found his groove. Still we have only seen a few flashes of dominant LeBron. He’s been solid but not his usual self. And the high volume of 3’s he’s been taking has hurt much more often than helped. If Father Time is finally catching up to him, it’s even more important that we run an offense that will allow more of the others to flourish.
Aloha, Michael,
Great post that touched on many issues in which I’m 100% in agreement with you.
The Lakers in their own way are trying to transform their team. They realized last season that they were not going to be able to repeat their success in the bubble for multiple reasons, including that the path to the championship was going to be harder and the good defense/poor offense role players they had would not be good enough post-Covid. In fact, you could argue they knew that right after winning the title in 2020 because they went out and traded defense for offense with Schroder and Harrell, just like they did this summer.
So you’re dead right about the Lakers having an identity crisis and a big part of that is the head coach’s conflict with where the front office wants to take this team. Rather than keep working on how to make AD at the five work despite the lack of size available at the three, Frank reverts back to two bigs, a concept that cannot work with a LeBron, AD, and Russ Big Three. And he appears to be committed to continuing to ignore the lack of spacing out of stubbornness and ignorance. Trying to say AB was critical because of his effort was weak. As was the sudden ghosting of DJ 3 minutes into the game. Signs of a coach not knowing what to do but acting strangely under pressure.
Frank Vogel has a chance to evolve and be the coach this team needs but he’s going to have to change his stripes some and show he can adapt, something that’s not been his strength. With Russ, the Lakers have no choice but to play AD at the five. Until Frank accepts this, everything the Lakers do will be just wasting time and not building any habits or playing the way you’re going to have to win another championship. Lakers are swamped with dissonance right now. System vs. Personnel might better be described as small ball and analytics vs. coach’s bias and resume.
The way the Lakers have evolved, meaning the trade for Russ or as Jamie puts it ‘that damn dinner,’ the Lakers have committed to embracing an analytics driven small ball style of play. They don’t have a choice after trading for Russ. It’s now clear to me why the Lakers only gave Frank the one-year extension. It was not because they didn’t think he was a good or potentially great coach. It’s because there was a good chance he might not be the ‘right’ coach for a Lakers team looking to modernize.
Whenever I read Michael’s posts of recent one thing becomes clear that I have always agreed with: a shooter is only going to be good if you involve him in the offense. You can’t bring in a shooter and expect him to be any good if you don’t get him touches or get him into a rhythm. That is a problem we have been having the past few years and has become a stigma. I have noticed that in numerous games this season and Michael’s point reflects my thoughts. Thanks for the post, Michael.
Been saying the Vogel offense does not account for what a guy likes to do on offense other than whatever stars are on the squad. The offense is let LeBron or Russ create, dump it into AD, Melo bail us out. That’s it. There is no: run these screens to free Ellington to shoot from the spot he rarely misses from, or let Monk be the dominant ball-handler with LBJ as a decoy or a lot of things i think we could tweak on offense and that is because LBJ and to a lesser degree Russ probably don’t want to do that. They’re stubborn and have ultimate faith in themselves which is both why they are superstars and why this situation becomes more and more untenable.
What we’re all really asking is for LeBron, Russ and AD to not be themselves and allow the role guys to be more dominant. I, for one, can understand why there would be push-back from every angle. Ownership because of the money paid to the big 3, the players because they’ve trained their whole lives to be this thing that they are, and so on.