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Ramona Shelburne
So much was is going behind the scenes of 1 February – when Los Angeles Lakers“A stunning trade for Doncic He was filled – that it was easy to miss what happened in the game in the game that night.
Lakers beat Knicks 128-112 In Madison Square Garden behind a hard defensive effort without their best defense player, Anthony Davis. Box score offered traces on how they did: Knicks stars Jalen Brunson (16 points in shooting 7 to 18) and Karl-Anthony (17 when shooting 3 to 12) had a night while players as a role as a role Josh Hart (26 When shooting 11 to 16) lifted the release.
Another game, winning 122-97 over Clippers, offered more evidence. James Harden Shots 2-for-12 with only seven points. Kawhi Leonard Went 4-for-11 for 11 points. Then came 120-112 victories over warriors in which Stephen Curry It ended with 37, but it was a cruel 6-for-20 from behind the 3-point arch.
It was over the next four weeks, during a section in which Lakers won 13 out of 15 games and set out on the Western Conference ranking that coaches and scouts around the league began to explore that victory over Knicks for traces what Lakers did. During the first three months of the season they left the 20th best defense of the league.
How did Brunson and Towns hold the team without their best defensive players on a combined 30% shooting? What about Harden and Leonard? Curry? Was it just bad nights? Or did the Lakers invented with traditionally small sets some kind of non -traditional scheme that could suppress the biggest NBA stars?
ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins assumed that LA simply admitted a three -point shot and courageous teams to shoot out of the games. Others pointed out a defensive game Dorian Finney-Smith and Gabe Vincent. One scout said ESPN simply, “I think they just play really hard.”
No one was wrong. However, no one came up with an explanation that fully captured why the Lakers closed teams without their two best defenders.
Most importantly, no one knew that if what the Lakers did would work when it matters most: with the NBA championship on the line.
It was around This time, former coach of Duke Mike Krzyzewski sent the text to his former player, the head coach Lakers JJ Redick to check him. Krzyzewski has always watched the NBA games, but this season he paid particular attention to Lakers.
“I reached out and said,” Who’s hell would you predict that you can teach defense? “” Krzyzewski joked.
Redick won the Player of the Year in Duke, but at the beginning of his career NBA, defense or its lack, he sometimes kept sharpshooters from the floor. Eventually improved enough to play meaningful minutes for clippers, Philadelphia 76ers and New Orleans Pelicans.
“What they do seems very simple,” Krzyzewski Espn said, “but in fact it is a lot of preparation.
Could sound Simple: Make the best players of the other team to score and encourage less dangerous shooters. However, the Lakers scheme is much more complicated than that and was born from offseason analysis by the editor and its employees on how the NBA defense can play judges against modern NBA offenses.
Even an IS brilliant individual defender as Davis, who is as good as a rim protector as in the league, is virtually impossible to slow the modern NBA super-star at the Pick-and-Roll events because 3-point shooting is emphasized.
Most teams focus on obtaining peripheral defenders to at least slow down superstars before they meet a back-line defender like Davis. But as the referees now call manual control of the foul, it is also difficult.
Lakers came to the season with another problem: two weak peripherals One-One as their initial guards in D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves. Thus, they developed a defensive scheme to alleviate this vulnerability – and rescued Davis from exhaustive amounts of work as a defender of the backline.
Lakers, Thinking Got, would create an illusion of crowded flooring for a handler of the ball, rather than everyone’s training in Davis.
During the first half of the season it worked in Spurts. But the Lakers defensive scheme froze as soon as La exchanged Finney-Smith at the end of December, and several weeks later became more of a more rotation.
Star players will always find ways to score. What the Lakers do is to use the analytics to distribute the least effective shots that every stellar player gets, and then try to force them to force themselves you Shots, unlike their most effective shots.
Lakers reduce shots in color-only 39.9% of the shots that have tried against them came from the inside, the third lowest NBA rate, Geniusiq, sports analytical aspects driven AI-A 3S power; 49% of the shots they face come from the deep, second highest NBA brand.
Consider the first game Knicks: Lakers swarmed Brunson and Towns and forced them to pass them on less dangerous players like Hart, Miles McBride and Precious Achiuwa. Brunson and Towns were questioned by a diameter of 1.37 players to attempt a shot, the third most they faced in the game this season, Geniusiq. Hart and McBride, on the other hand, faced 0.92 for an attempt, the seventh lowest brand in the game in which they joined for 20 or more attempts to shots.
And whoever prevents less dangerous players, will help aggressively in more dangerous, often leaving his player completely open, as Vincent in a 9:53 play remaining in the fourth quarter, abandoning McBride to clog the passing strip of Brunson, who has already been denied Max Christia.
This is intentional. Lakers send a double team inside the arch for the second top speed in basketball and watch only Oklahoma City Thunder. During the above -mentioned game in the McBride garden, he raised dribbing near the top of the three -point arch, realizing that Lakers left him completely alone and decided to shoot. Air-ball.
The ball fell directly into the waiting hands of James, who plays what Redick describes as a “quarterback” role in the scheme.
Redick placed James On the middle of this decision -making tree he relied on his basketball IQ to call the coverage and adjustments while running. “Quarterback is an offensive position, but it’s a Quarterback on (our) defense,” Redick said. “Much of it is his voice and his IQ.”
Watch the Lakers carefully in defense and James is a director who constantly shows where his teammates have to go – and when.
“In the first half there was a game where (Reaves) went to a big one,” Redick remarked after a recent victory over missiles. “Bron shouted at him in half a second,” Scram! He plays this way really connect our defense. ”
Lakers fought when James is not in court, he plays the role of Quarterback. When James suffered and During the game on 8th March remained tension of weaknesses vs. Boston Celtics. However, as soon as James returned from this injury on March 22, from 30 January to the end of the regular season they returned to synchronization, La ranked sixth in a 3-point field permitted. During this range, it also prevented the eighth state -of -the -art attempts to play.
In other words, Lakers gave up many 3-point attempts, but the teams did not do much. According to Geniusiq, opponents from 30 January fired 36.8% on a wide open 3-proofer against the Lakers, the third best rate “allowed” in this section.
Why? Because Lakers force the least effective shooter in enemy teams to take the 3.
As? Communication until they lose their voices – sometimes literally.
James leads the choir when he is out there but Jarred VanderbiltFinney-Smith and Vincent will also enter this role when James is not in court. There is also a constant direction during defense assets. Coach assistant Greg Jean is often hoarse from barking coverage.
The result was a defense that worked much better as a whole than its individual defenders could indicate. “People could look at us and say we’re going to be small,” said ESPN about Lakers, often sets up without a center without a traditional rim protector after a Davis shop to Mavericks. “But we also have five boys who are there 6 stop-7 or more … and when we play well, we’re all on the chain.”
Occasionally it may look like the defense of the zone when the Lakers packs the color and rotates to close the gaps and walk through the stripes. But it’s not a zone. It is a mixture of modern analysts and old schools, Bobby Knight-steling to the one who is one who died of a good shot.
The goal is to play a percentage. Disrupt what the other team wants to do as much as possible. Force great players to buy bad or average shots. But also for average players to shoot more by giving up good shots.
In this way it takes time and confidence in this system. When this trust fails, the defense. Sometimes spectacular. But this is the best chance that Lakers has two of his best defensive players after trading.
And in the first round against Anthony Edwardsone of the most dynamic NBA shooters – and shooters – a Minnesota TimberwolvesThe team with sets that can be large or small is about to test the Lakers defense again.
