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Ramona Shelburne
It was so much Having back on the scene on February 1, when the surprising exchange of Los Angeles Lakers for Luka Doncic was being consummated, which was easy to miss what really happened in the game that night.
The Lakers had defeated the Knicks 128-112 at Madison Square Garden behind a strong defensive effort without their best defensive player, Anthony Davis. The box score offered clues about how they had done it: Knicks stars Jalen Brunson (16 points in 7 of 18 shots) and Karl-Anthony Towns (17 in 3 of 12 shots) had nights outside the nights, while roles players like Josh Hart (26 in 11 of 16 shots) collected the slack.
The next game, a 122-97 victory over the clippers, offered more evidence. James Harden shot 2 of 12 with only seven points. Kawhi Leonard was 4 of 11 by 11 points. Then came a 120-112 victory over the Warriors in which Stephen Curry ended with 37, but it was an atrocious 6 of 20 behind the 3-point arch.
It was during the next four weeks, during a stretch in which the Lakers won 13 of 15 games and shot in the west conference classification, which the coaches and explorers of the league began to examine that gain on the Knicks by clues about what the Lakers had been doing. They had gone from the twenty best defense of the league during the first three months of the season to the first.
How did a team without his best defensive players kept Brunson and cities for a combined 30%shot? What about Harden and Leonard? Curry? Was these bad nights? Or the Lakers, with traditionally small alignments, invented some type of non -traditional scheme that could suffocate the largest stars in the NBA?
The ESPN analyst, Kendrick Perkins, postulated that he was simply admitting the 3 -point shot and the daring teams to shoot out of the games. Others pointed out the defensive work of Dorian Finney-Smith and Gabe Vincent. An explorer told ESPN, “I think they are just playing very hard.”
No one was wrong. But nobody had found an explanation that captured why the Lakers were closing the teams without their two best defenders.
And, perhaps the most important thing, nobody knew, if what the Lakers were doing would work when I am most: with a NBA championship at stake.
It was around This time, Duke’s former coach Mike Krzyzewski sent a text message to his former player, the chief coach of the first -year Lakers, JJ Redick, to see it. Krzyzewski had always seen NBA games, but had been paying attention especially close to the Lakers this season.
“I communicated with him and said: ‘Who the hell would have predicted that you could teach the defense?'” Krzyzewski joked.
Redick won a player of the year in Duke, but at the beginning of his career, defense or his lack of the NBA, he had kept the Sarto to Redick from the floor sometimes. Finally, it improved enough to play significant minutes for the clippers, the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Orleans pelicans.
“What they are doing seems very simple,” said Krzyzewski to ESPN, “but in reality it is a great preparation. They make it where the smallest percentage shooters of the other team are taking more shots.”
Could sound Simple: make it difficult for the best players of the other team score while encouraging less dangerous shooters. But the scheme of the Lakers is much more complicated than that, and Redick and his NBA staff were born outside the low season analysis and their staff about how the referees of the NBA defenses against the referees against the modern crimes of the NBA.
Even with a brilliant individual defender as Davis, who is as good as a tire protector as in the league, it is practically impossible to slow down the modern NBA superstar in the pick-And-Loll actions in space due to the amount of 3-point shooting.
Most teams focus on acquiring perimeter defenders to at least slow the superstars before meeting a background defender like Davis. But with the way the referees call hand verification fouls now, even that is difficult.
The Lakers entered the season with another problem: two perimeter defenders one by one weak as their initial guards in D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves. Therefore, they developed a defensive scheme to mitigate that vulnerability, and save Davis from an exhausting amount of work as a defender of the background.
The Lakers, he thought, would create the illusion of a floor full of people for the ball handling instead of channeling everyone to Davis.
It worked in Spurts during the first half of the season. But the defensive scheme of the Lakers hardened once Finney-Smith changed it at the end of December and became a larger part of the rotation a few weeks later.
Star players will always find ways to score. What the Lakers do is use analysis to break down the less efficient shots that each star player takes and then try to force them those Shots, unlike its most efficient shots.
The Lakers limit the shots in the painting: only 39.9% of the shots tried against them come from inside, the third lowest rate of the NBA, per geniusiq, a site of sports analysis with AI, and Force 3s; 49% of the shots they face come from Deep, the second highest in the NBA.
Consider that first game of the Knicks: the Lakers swarmed Brunson and the cities, forcing them to move to less dangerous offensive players such as Hart, thousands McBride and Priceus Achiuwa. Brunson and Towns were played for an average of 1.37 players for trial attempt, the third they faced in a game this season, by Geniusiq. On the contrary, Hart and McBride faced 0.92 for attempt, the seventh lower brand in a game in which they combined for 20 or more attempts to shoot.
And who defends the less dangerous players will aggressively help the most dangerous, often leaving their player completely open, as Vincent did in a play with remaining 9:53 in the fourth quarter, when he left McBride to obstruct a lane of passes to Brunson, whom he was already being denied by Max Christie.
This is intentional. The Lakers send a double team inside the arc to the second highest rate in basketball, only the thunder of Oklahoma City. In the aforementioned play in the garden, McBride picked up his dribbling near the top of the 3 -point arch, realized that the Lakers had left him completely alone and decided to shoot. He shot.
The ball fell directly to the hands that await James, who interprets what Redick describes as a “field marshal” role in the scheme.
Redick placed James In the center of this decision -making tree, trust its intellectual basketball coefficient to call the coverage and adjustments on the march. “Quarterback is an offensive position, but he is the field marshal in [our] Defense, “said Redick.” Much of that is his voice and his intellectual coefficient. “
Look at the Lakers closely in defense, and James is the director, constantly pointing to where his teammates should go, and when.
“There was a play in the first half where [Reaves] He turned on in a great, “said Redick after a recent victory over rockets.” In half second, Bron shouted: ‘Scram! SALT, AR! Get out of here! Games like that really connect our defense. “
The Lakers have fought when James is not on the court, playing that role as a field marshal. They fell significantly when James suffered a strain of the left groin during a March 8 game against the Boston Celtics. But they synchronized once James returned from that injury on March 22. From January 30 to the end of the regular season, it was occupied by the sixth place in a permitted 3 -point field percentage. He also defended the eighth 3 -point attempts per game during that period.
In other words, the Lakers renounced many attempts of 3 points, but the teams did not do many of them. According to Geniusiq, the opponents have triggered 36.8% in triples open against the Lakers since January 30, the third best rate “allowed” in that section.
Because? Because the Lakers are forcing the less efficient shooters to the opposite teams to take those 3.
As? When communicating until they lose their voices, sometimes literally.
James leads the choir when he is there, but Jarred Vanderbilt, Finney-Smith and Vincent also enter that role when James is not on the court. There is also a constant direction from the lateral line during defensive possessions. The assistant coach Greg St. Jean is often hoarse when he bark coverage.
The result has been a defense that has had a much better performance as a whole than its individual defenders could suggest. “People could look at us and say that we are leaving,” Reaves told ESPN about alignments often without the Lakers centers without a traditional tire protector after Davis’s trade to the Mavericks. “But we also have five types that have 6 feet 7 inches and beyond … and when we are playing well, we are all on a rope.”
Sometimes, that may seem like a zone defense since the Lakers pack the paint and turn to close the holes and pass lanes. But it is not an area. It is a mixture of modern analysis and old school, the style denial of Bobby Knight of whoever goes from good shot.
The goal is to play the percentages. To interrupt what the other team wants to do as much as possible. To force great players to have bad or average shots. But also to Cajole’s average players to shoot more giving good shots.
You need time and confidence in the scheme to play in this way effectively. When that trust fails, the defense does so. Sometimes spectacularly. But it is the best opportunity that the Lakers have after exchanging two of their best defensive players.
And in the first round against Anthony Edwards, one of the most dynamic scorers of the NBA, and the shooters, and the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team with alignments that can be large or small, the defense of the Lakers is about to be tested once again.
