After the Houston Rockets’ Game 1 Round 2 upset of the Los Angeles Lakers, there are renewed calls for Frank Vogel to change his starting lineup but what he actually needs to do is change the style his team is playing.
Heading into the playoffs, the concern was the Lakers’ ability to contain the Rockets’ small ball offense. While the Lakers still need to adjust defensively, their real problem in Game 1 was beating the Rockets’ small ball defense. The smaller, tougher Rocket’s defenders were essentially able to bully and outplay the taller Lakers’ players in the paint at both ends of the court, winning points-in-the-paint and tying them in the battle of the boards.
Benching traditional back-to-basket centers is only part of the solution to matching up with the Rockets’ crafty small ball lineup. Starting and playing Anthony Davis or Markieff Morris at center will help the Lakers defensively. But pounding the ball inside to Anthony Davis against PJ Tucker is exactly what the Rockets want. You don’t beat them just by going small on offense. You actually need to play small, which means without a traditional center.
While the Rockets offense is revolutionary, their strategy on defense uses simple time-tested traditional tactics of packing the paint, keeping their opponents from getting to the rim, and forcing them to shoot long jumpers. Starting Anthony Davis at center and isolating him in the post against the smaller PJ Tucker is fools’ gold. It only clogs the lane, prevents LeBron from getting to the rim, and ultimately helps the Rocket’s defensive strategy.
What the Lakers need to do to beat Houston’s switch-everything defense is abandon trying to take advantage of their height in the post and instead spread the defense to open the floor for LeBron and AD to attack the rim. The way to beat Houston’s defense is to unpack the paint and eliminate any rim protection by playing 5-out sets positioning five players who can effectively shoot the three and attack the basket behind the 3-point line.
Players who could be good fits for 5-out sets include starters LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Danny Green plus reserves Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, Markieff Morris, and Dion Waiters. Frank Vogel would be smart to consider playing an eight-player rotation of those players against the Houston Rockets. They could match up on defense and enable the Lakers to spread the floor and attack the paint on offense.
You’ll notice that I did not include Rajon Rondo in that eight-player rotation because he lacks the 3-point gravity necessary to keep his defender from sagging off him to clog up the middle and is a liability on the defensive end. Besides a respectful loyalty to JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard for their contributions to winning the West, Vogel needs to understand this is not the right series for Rondo or McGee or Howard to play. Not against the Rockets.
While the Lakers also lost Game 1 to the Blazers, what’s scary about losing the first game against the Rockets is how they beat LA at their own game. They didn’t dominate by raining threes. They played smarter basketball. Like Mike Budenholzer, whose refusal to make changes has the Bubble Bucks on the verge of being swept by the Heat, Frank Vogel’s reluctance to adjust his lineups or style of play may end up costing the Bubble Lakers.
Right now, the Lakers aren’t in great danger but if Vogel continues to rely on his usual lineups and rotations and the Lakers lose Game 2 to the Rockets and go down 0–2, the odds of them winning the series plummet to just 7%. While that’s not the 0% odds facing the Bucks, it’s not where the Lakers want to be 2 games into the series, which means Vogel needs to get serious and make major adjustments before Sunday’s Game 2 against Houston.
The changes Frank needs to make are simple. On offense, he needs to bench McGee and Howard, give their roles and minutes to Kuzma, Caruso, Morris, and Waiters, and spread the floor with 5-out sets to free LeBron and AD. Defensively, he should consider playing a triangle and two zone to double Harden at the half-court line, commit defenders to prevent easy corner threes, and keep Anthony Davis in the middle for rim protection.
The bottom line is LeBron James and Anthony Davis are being outplayed by James Harden and Russell Westbrook but a big part of the blame is due to Frank Vogel stubbornly refusing to change his lineups and strategies.
There always are, of course, multiple ways a coach can adjust his offense and defense to counter a bad performance. My concern is Vogel having too much confidence in the lineups and style of play that got the Lakers top seed in the West to make any changes. That was an admirable trait during the regular season but could be a real liability in the playoffs.
But if the shots don’t fall and LeBron and AD still cannot find space to attack the rim, McGee and Howard still don’t contribute much at either end, the danger is the Lakers could go down 0-2 and only 27 out of 394 (6.4%) teams have been able to come back and win the series. That’s a hole the Lakers do not want to fall into and we all know the Rockets are likely to go crazy and rain made threes down on the Lakers in one of the games in this series so Vogel cannot dither and wait.
Eight-player rotation with four starters – LeBron, AD, Green, and KCP – and four reserves – Kuzma, Caruso, Morris, and Waiters (No Rondo) – playing 5-out sets on offense and a triangle and two zone on defense with the guards doubling Harden, the forward sticking with the corner shooters, and AD protecting the rim in the middle. That’s what Vogel should do to make sure the Bubble Lakers don’t become the Bubble Bucks.
Good read LT, have to admire your commitment to what is really a D’Antoni-esque style of coaching. There are definitely things I agree with in this article (play the players who produce, going 0-2 is bad, Vogel is unlikely to make the adjustments brought up in your article, and definitely that the Rockets will go nova from three at some point) I can’t imagine a world where Frank Vogel re-works the Laker offense between Friday night and tomorrow evening. Nor are we going to outright relegate players to the pine because they’re tall.
Where I think you’ll see changes are in the minutes played and with whom. It was foolhardy to trot out a never-played together-before-ever in the playoffs. Vogel has to realize that preseason ended almost a year ago and I think there’s a lot of that frustration embroiled in your write up and likely in a large number of Lakers fans, in general. However, this was always going to be an issue for the Lakers based on how late they acquired new players, the timing of COVID-19 and Avery Bradley opting not to play.
If we’re going to break down the minutes lets not preplan foul trouble. In an ideal Laker world Alex Caruso isn’t play 16 minutes. It’s closer to 25 and that adds a lot of defense and toughness that felt lacking in Game 1. That’s a bonus. I think you might also see less Kuzma and maybe even a little less Dwight (hard to imagine him playing much fewer than the 11 minutes he played on Friday night, tho).
Where I think you can save yourself some personal aggravation is in hoping Vogel changes the starting 5. I don’t get the feeling that he’ll change that at any point. It’s a respect thing, it’s what got us here (minus Avery bradley, of course) and to that point I truly thinl the only change woud be switching KCP out of the starting guard spot he currently inhabits. McGee is starting, it’s real hard for me to see that changing for Frank. KCP has flitted in and out of the starting line up (Rondo started 3 games this season) and I could see Rajon getting the nod for a couple reasons: to start the game off giving LeBron less duties as the primary distributor and getting a vet in after warming up.
I feel liek we alo need to do battle better at a mental level. Harden is annoyingly good player who adds a fair amount of drama because of his propensity to get whistles in his favor. That doesn’t mesh well with Dwight, KCP or Kuzma who get too into the refs for guys of their station. LeBron? Definitely, AD, defnitely, Rondo, OK sure. After that, let it go. They’re calling those fouls for James Harden and when they don’t he’ll go apoplectic. It’ll happen in at least one game. Dwight has a little more leash on this one than Kuz but all our hot head dudes need to figure out how to get over it and move on.
The main way we can improve our chances to win, I feel given what we know about our team and Frank Vogel, is to not so mcu double-down on playing big but focus on playing big better. Playing big better will negate a lot of the advantages we ceded to Housont in Game 1 and will put the emotional drama on Houston. P.J. Tucker has never agreed with a foul called on him in his life, same goes for a lot fo Houston. You have to attack that collapsing defense a lot smarter than we were able to on Friday and that doesn’t just mean chucking threes.
Having said that, we need to be better from three. The whole 5-out, triangle, whole new offense in a couple days thing is unrealistic. It ain’t happening. But guys like Danny Green, KCP and Kuzma need to be at least 35% as a group. If they’re all hitting it’ll really open up LeBron and AD’s game but at least one of them has to be hot in a quarter. That’s it. I think that, if AD and LeBron play more to type and we don’t get too into the refs and out of our identity it’ll be enough against most teams on most nights. In a way that’s exactly what the Bubble is: teams on a night. No fans, boring atmosphere, no smell of nachos. Weird.
All that’s cool but let’s all say it again: we’re going as far as Anthony Davis and LeBron James take us. They got outplayed, by Harden early and Westbrook late. That’s the Houston pattern. Everyone seems mystified that Harden takes a backseat late in games a lot. I’m not, the dude is tired and Russell Westbrook has the power of star inside of him. Not a TMZ star, a ball of hyper-hot gas exploding on an atomic level every second of it’s life. They’ll switch that pattern up, or try to, and that’s where we have to be quicker to adapt. We have to be like the freaking Borg in this series.
But, like you said, I’m not sure Frank has it in him or even that guys like AD or LBJ agree that those kind of changes to any of it need be made. For all we know this is exactly what those two guys have been asking for behind closed doors. We’ll likely never know. My hope is guys like Green and KCP produce, Caruso starys out of foul trouble and LeBron and AD show up for a full 48. I think it’s going to happen and we’ll see a sharpe, more in tune Laker squad tomorrow night.
Well said, Jaime. Couldn’t agree more.