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Out of the game?
The troubles of the Lakers' faltering constellation
LeBron is no longer physically dominant and settles for shots from outside, Davis' shooting from outside has completely dissipated and Russell Westbrook remains one of the least effective players in the NBA alongside them as well.
Assaf Ravitz suggests that you do not build on another LeBron gear in the playoffs, and recalls the lesson of Kobi and Gasol
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Los Angeles Lakers
LeBron James
Anthony Davis
Russell Westbrook
Assaf Ravitz
Monday, 29 November 2021, 15:00
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Los Angeles Lakers players celebrate NBA championship (from the Lakers' Twitter account)
Nearly a quarter of a season is behind us, and most of the league is crowded around 50 percent success. Only two teams, Golden State and Phoenix, are looking really good so far, and next week there are going to be two games between them that will give an initial indication of the hierarchy between the two majors of the quarter. They are followed by Brooklyn, which manages to win and falter at the same time, and then there are 18 teams in the range of 47 to 65 percent success, with a gap of no more than three and a half games.
Deep within this cauldron is the Lakers, who were supposed to be one of the top contenders for the championship. After the weak over Detroit tonight, LA has a 11:11 balance and is tied for three more teams in places 6-9 in the West. And that balance is lying for the better, because the Lakers' game schedule has been one of the easiest in the league so far. The gang's net rating from Los Angeles (3.2-) is equivalent to 24th place in the league. The abnormal density makes it relatively easy to overcome a bad season opener or an injury blow, a good two weeks can bounce a team to the low top. Milwaukee, for example, is just a second away in the East. The champion suffered a blow from injuries and as soon as most of the injured returned she looked excellent.
The Lakers also have similar mitigating circumstances, most notably LeBron James' prolonged absence.
But even when the three stars play Frank Vogel's team looks bad, it's very hard to see the Lakers and not feel that the disappointing season opener indicates the most real problems.
It can be said that all the question and warning signs that have circulated above this group from the moment we were informed of Russell Westbrook's trade are coming true.
Today we will dive into the data behind the opening of this crisis season, which has even led to rumors that the chair of Frank Vogel, the coach who led the Lakers to the bubble championship, is already swaying.
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To the full article
Even when the three stars are playing it looks bad (Photo: GettyImages, Kevork Djansezian)
The problem starts with the vertices, the three stars. In the 175 minutes shared by LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook, the Lakers' net rating is minus 5.6. If in the previous two years the difficulties started the moment one of the stars went down to rest, this year the minutes of the trio together are among the weakest of the Lakers. Something does not work in this combination, but first of all something does not work in each of them separately.
In LeBron's case, it is precisely the absence that is particularly troubling. Age and mileage are doing their thing and has caused LeBron to miss half of the games of the season so far due to two injuries (and disqualification from one game). When King James plays he is still great, in his minutes the attacking game has some direction, but it is evident that his physical dominance is no longer there. His game is no longer based on the ability to get to the color whenever he wants, and is much more based on shots from outside - threes and hard shots on a fade-away from half-distance. LeBron reaches the penalty line the fewest times in his career this year and throws the most threes. Several times in the game he starts a movement towards the basket and realizes while he no longer has the explosive force required to finish it. It is no longer possible to build on the fact that in the playoffs he will have extra gear.
Anthony Davis, in many ways, is recovering from a weak offensive season by his standards.
He now has two partners for Pick n 'Roll who know how to use him in color, he is back to being aggressive and most of the time he is not satisfied with shots from outside.
But another reason for this is that he is in the middle of a second year in which his shot from outside completely collapsed.
He scores threes at an appalling 16.7 percent, does not hit from half-distance and his penalty percentage continues to be bad - a second year he scores from the line at less than 74 percent, having in the previous seven seasons dropped from 79 percent only once and two years ago scored a penalty in 84.6 percent.
There are precedents for players whose shot from outside disappeared for an extended period and then they found it back, but there are also precedents for players who one fine day turned reasonable or medium-sized machine guns into threats.
One such star in the next paragraph.
Based much more on shots from outside.
LeBron James (Photo: GettyImages, Kevork Djansezia)
The problem with Russell Westbrook is that he did not stop being Russell Westbrook, the hope that he would change his skin in the new situation was quickly dispelled. He continues to be one of the least efficient players in the league: 43.8 percent from the field, 31.2 percent from three, 70.3 percent from penalties and 4.8 losses per game. He continues to take bad shots from three and a half distances at the beginning of a clock even with two of the top scorers in the world next to him. He continues to do nothing when the ball is not in his hand: hardly moves to the ring, does not block others, does not try to open delivery angles.
The Lakers' offensive game is based entirely on the rare personal abilities of the three: LeBron always thinks one move ahead in defense, Davis combines size and athleticism in a way that makes him a natural phenomenon in color, Westbrook creates a running game out of nothing and arranges good shots for himself and others in passing. But any attempt by Vogel to diversify the attacking game beyond personal talent and pick n 'roll moves does not bear fruit.
Successful constellations create from the superstars a whole that is large or at least equal to the sum of its parts, in the whole Lakers the whole is smaller than the sum of its parts. The shooting problem of Russ and Davis and the fact that both LeBron and Russ are not used to and know how to play far from the ball make the Lakers an easy team to maintain. The defenses know exactly what is going to happen in each pass, they can afford to crowd without moving away from a few of the better outside shots and they entice the stars to throw from the outside. The Lakers are ranked last in the league in the amount of threes from the corner, a pretty amazing figure in the team of LeBron and Ras.
The defense looks even worse than the offense (both the offense and the defense are in the bottom half of the league). For the past two years the defense has been the pride of the Lakers from the first moment of the season: Davis looks like a candidate for defensive player of the season, LeBron has invested more than previous years, Vogel has nurtured players like Alex Caruso, Cantabius Caldwell Pop and Kyle Kozma, who have become quality guards. This year none of this is happening.
The defense is energyless, every game has quite a few moments of lack of coordination and very basic mistakes, the team feels heavy and lacking in desire.
The Lakers are ranked among the last ten in the league in all defensive categories related to discipline and effort: points of the opponent from losses, from a second chance, in a running game and in color.
In general, this is a very weak rebound group, which is an unexpected figure.
Unusual and does not know how to play far from the ball.
Russell Westbrook (Photo: GettyImages)
Some of it has to do with the assisting staff. This time Vogel does not have too many energetic youngsters to nurture, most of the sub-players are veterans at the end of their careers who did not really come to work hard on defense in November. Big teams need veterans with playoff experience on the bench, but not all of the assisting three-star team can be based on such players. Many of them will turn out to be beyond the peak, they will be very prone to injuries and also those who function will do so in second gear during the regular season.
Carmelo Anthony, for example, has fitted in nicely as a kind of threesome expert, but for several years he has been unable to save at all. The youngsters Vogel has on the roster are all scorer guards, not classic sub-players. They too have suffered quite a few injuries so far, Kendrick Nan has yet to play this season, but even at their peak it will be difficult for them to change the team's tired atmosphere on their own.
All this does not mean that the Lakers should be eulogized.
The Westbrook Lakers experiment alongside LeBron requires time to adapt, certainly when all the players around are new.
It should be remembered that this is a staff that was built almost from scratch in the summer and is still in the early stages of introduction.
Vogel is still conducting many experiments and has yet to find any winning formula.
So far there has been no quintet that has played more than 51 minutes in a row or more than eight in a row.
The advantage for veteran players, at least those who are still relevant, is that in real time they will know how to make the switch and connect.
When LeBron has a healthy and talented squad in the playoffs, it's usually a winning recipe in itself.
Begins to mention the 2012 Lakers (Photo: GettyImages, Kevork Djansezian)
But sometimes it turns out that bad teams are just bad teams.
Something in the current team is reminiscent of the Lakers of the 2012/13 season, the attempt to add to Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol Dwight Howard and Steve Nash.
It was an attempt to create a super-team from a bunch of players who do not connect together, some of whom are already past their peak, at a stage when they are prone to injuries.
Even then the problems were already evident in the pre-season games and at no point did this team really connect.
It's hard to imagine a LeBron team crashing like that, but in 2012 it was just as hard to imagine a Kobe team like that.
So while it is impossible to eulogize the Lakers at the moment, it is also impossible to rule out the possibility that the season opener represents the true ability of this team.
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