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Dave McMenamin, ESPN Staff Writer
The cramped visitors locker room at Kaseya Center felt extra crowded last week after the Los Angeles Lakers’ 41-point shellacking at the hands of the Miami Heat.
LeBron James and Anthony Davis were assigned lockers across from each other, leaving a couple of dozen reporters to pack the space in between them, waiting for the stars to explain how their defense could be so thoroughly decimated by the Heat.
James spoke first. “We got to figure it out,” he said after L.A. lost for the sixth time in eight games. “Because it’s definitely embarrassing, for sure.”
Miami shot 57.8% from the field and a volcanic 51.1% on 3-pointers — tying a franchise record for 3s in a regular-season game with 24 while pouring 134 points on the Lakers — tied for the most L.A. has allowed under new coach JJ Redick.
The Lakers bottomed out in the third quarter when Tyler Herro single-handedly outscored them, hitting seven straight 3s and leading Miami to win the period 36-20.
When asked what the Lakers did wrong in guarding Herro, James quipped: “Everything.”
After James finished answering questions, reporters pivoted to Davis, who put the onus on himself after scoring a season-low eight points on 3-of-14 shooting.
“I hate losing,” Davis said dejectedly. “The way we’re losing, we’re playing bad, blown out. I’m not playing well individually. It’s an accumulation of things and it’s frustrating.”
Davis took accountability, but even had he made the 11 other shots he attempted that night in Miami, L.A. still would have lost by double digits.
A quarter of the way through the season, the Lakers are 13-11 and have issues that Davis can’t fix individually.
With James starting to show his age, L.A.’s defense continuing to be exposed in multiple facets and even the normally headstrong Redick admitting, “We’re all trying to find it,” after the loss to Miami, there is mounting evidence that this season could go sideways without a significant shakeup.
With Redick taking advantage of a break in the schedule to give his team time to reset this week ahead of Friday’s game on the road against the Minnesota Timberwolves, here’s a look at what’s plaguing L.A. — and what can be done to fix it.
Porous defense
“They weren’t even trying,” one Western Conference scout, who reviewed film from the L.A.-Miami game, told ESPN of the Lakers.
“The Lakers play with zero physicality,” he said. “It’s easy to get transition baskets. It’s easy to score via pick-and-rolls. It’s easy to post up and cut for easy baskets. Everything is just easy.”
The numbers back up that assessment. The Lakers have allowed opponents to shoot 63% on layups and dunks in the half court this season, which is fourth worst in the league. Part of the reason for that alarming percentage is that the Lakers are allowing the third-highest shot quality on those shots at the rim in the half court, according to Second Spectrum, with only 64% of those point-blank attempts considered to be heavily contested by L.A.’s defenders.
When asked about L.A.’s pick-and-roll defense against Miami, and against the Wolves in the game that preceded it when the Lakers lost by 29 points, Redick was direct as he exhumed the defeats.
“Did not execute our switches, were not physical, did not communicate,” Redick said Wednesday. “Communication was a big issue in Miami as well, no matter what we tried. Again, you can’t play basketball and not talk. In terms of technique and schemes, if you don’t talk, you’re dead. In terms of tweaking stuff, we’ve done it. We’ve done it in coverage. We’ve done it with 1 through 5, and we’ve done it being physical. We’ve done it talking, so that’s what we have to do. We can make adjustments on that. If you’re not talking and you’re not competing, you can’t really make adjustments.”
As rough as the half court has been, the open court has been even worse. L.A. is 29th in transition defense, allowing 1.44 points per possession. The Lakers have also had to defend the sixth-most transition possessions per game in the league this season.
Part of that problem can be linked to effort. They have had a man advantage when defending a transition possession just 44% of the time this season — the fifth-lowest rate in the league — meaning there aren’t enough players wearing purple and gold sprinting back to protect their basket.
However, with largely the same personnel as last season’s team that ranked 17th in defense, by allowing 114.8 points per 100 possessions, maybe L.A. ranking 26th and allowing 117.0 points per 100 possessions this season shouldn’t be so surprising.
“It’s been interesting to me, Darvin [Ham] took a lot of s— last year,” another Western Conference scout told ESPN. “I think now you’re seeing like, ‘Oh, maybe it wasn’t Darvin. Maybe it’s the f—ing roster.'”
He is not the only person among the half-dozen scouts, coaches and front office employees ESPN interviewed to suggest that L.A. needs different players if it expects different results.
“They need to trade for a good point-of-attack defender that can at least be capable of knocking down open shots,” an Eastern Conference scout told ESPN. “They don’t have many perimeter defenders.”
Added another Eastern Conference executive to ESPN: “I don’t think they have the personnel to be a good defensive team.”
Though Jarred Vanderbilt’s expected return next month will give Redick a player with a solid defensive track record to add to the Lakers’ rotation, Vanderbilt’s offensive limitations are also well documented.
“Honestly, they need what everybody wants,” one of the West scouts told ESPN. “It’s that versatile wing defender that can guard 2 through 4 and then can make an open 3. Your Mikal Bridges, your OG Anunoby, those type of players. And those guys, either: One, aren’t available; or two, if they are available, they’re not cheap, they’re at a premium. Everybody in the NBA wants guys like that.”
Not enough consistency from James and Davis, or players around them
Part of L.A.’s slide has coincided with Austin Reaves snapping his personal iron man streak of 129 straight regular-season games played before missing the past five games because of a left pelvic injury.
Before going out, Reaves had averaged a career-best 16.7 points, adding 4.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game.
“AD and LeBron need consistency from the rest of the group,” the East exec said. “The only guy that they rely on is Austin. He finally got to the point of not deferring to those guys. The rest of the group should follow suit. Too many guys don’t know how to play with them because they feel like they need to just give AD and LeBron the ball and wait for a pass. They end up forcing shots late-clock because that is when they get the ball.”
Another Eastern Conference front office member pointed to L.A.’s second tier of role players failing to make a difference. “Getting very little from Gabe Vincent, Cam Reddish, Christian Wood, Jaxson Hayes has been disappointing,” he told ESPN. “One of those guys needs to play better.”
Though a Lakers team source told ESPN that one of L.A.’s strengths is that Reaves, D’Angelo Russell or rookie Dalton Knecht is capable of being the leading scorer any game to take the burden off James and Davis, that’s still a relative rarity. In 24 games, Davis has been the leading scorer 12 times, James six times, Knecht three times, Reaves twice and Russell once.
As far as a big three goes, the results have been a big negative. The Lakers have a minus-8.4 net efficiency in the 383 minutes that Davis, James and Reaves have played together this season. That’s the third-worst net efficiency among 73, three-player combinations to appear on the court together for at least 350 minutes this season.
“If Austin Reaves is your third-best player — and I love Austin, I think he’s a very good basketball player — but if he’s your third-best player, you’re not a championship contender, you’re just not,” one of the West scouts told ESPN. “If you put Austin Reaves on the Oklahoma City Thunder or the Boston Celtics, he’s probably the fifth-, maybe even sixth-best player, on those rosters.”
James has been poor by his standards
If you judge by plus-minus, James has not only ceded control of the team to Davis and become the team’s second-best player in his 22nd season, he has become the Lakers’ worst player.
This season, the Lakers are minus-129 when James is on the floor, by far the worst on the team. And the Lakers are plus-42 when he is off the court.
James has used the off week to “take some time” away from the team for personal reasons, according to Redick. By sitting out against Minnesota, he will get eight days of rest and treatment on his sore left foot, and only miss two games.
Though his overall production — he’s averaging 23 points on 49.5% shooting, 9.1 assists and 8.0 rebounds — is unprecedented for a player at this late stage of his career, his recent struggles prior to the foot injury are alarming.
His 66 turnovers over the past 13 games are the most he has had in a 13-game stretch since signing with the Lakers in 2018. And before he went 6-for-11 on 3-pointers in an overtime loss against the Atlanta Hawks (with two misses coming late in the fourth in an attempt to ice it and at the buzzer in OT), James shot 4-for-34 from deep (11.8%) in his seven games prior to that.
“He had that stretch where he looked probably as human as he’s never looked in his career,” one of James’ former assistant coaches told ESPN. “It seems like he’s prolonged it more than anybody ever has, but at some point, he’s going to just reach a point where he can’t do it. And it seems like that day is getting closer and closer now. I don’t think it’s yet. I think that was just a rough stretch, but I think it is eye-opening to see it like, ‘Oh f—, he’s not God.’ He’s, at some point, going to not be able to do this anymore.”
Though Miami’s Erik Spoelstra suggested James’ combination of size, strength and smarts would allow him to keep playing the game at a high level for another decade if he wanted to, some of his effectiveness has clearly waned.
James has been off not only from the outside. He’s shooting 65% on layups and dunks, his lowest in a season since player tracking began in 2013-14, according to Second Spectrum. And his 62% mark on shots 8 feet from the basket is his lowest since his rookie season in 2003-04.
“When he just wasn’t knocking down shots from the outside, and with him not being as explosive as he once was, he’s going to struggle if he can’t play with the threat of his shot,” the East scout told ESPN.
One of the West scouts said it is Redick’s responsibility to engage James to impact winning, stats be damned.
“They will go nowhere if Redick and staff don’t find a way to challenge him beyond his historic numbers,” the scout told ESPN. “The supporting cast is always going to follow his lead. When they have these horrible games, it’s a reflection of him being able to cruise and still get great stats. They can’t cruise.”
Though James, along with Davis, shouldered the blame in Miami — saying a clunker such as that has to fall on the players, and not the coaches — a couple of nights later in Atlanta, he pointed to a different reason for L.A.’s loss.
“We don’t have much room for error,” James said, pointing to the “big pieces” L.A. was missing from the lineup in Reaves, Vanderbilt, Hayes and Wood.
Of course, that reality of James missing the matchup against Minnesota, and even more games, unfeasible if L.A. hopes to win.
“Sure, it’d be great to rest your second-best player who’s 40 years old, but with the lack of talent and obviously also the lack of health, it makes it incredibly difficult to sit somebody like that,” one of the West scouts told ESPN.
“So I don’t know what the right answer is. Because probably yes, the right thing for LeBron is to take some nights off just to rest his body and rest his mind. But you run the risk of not being able to win games just with your talent deficiency.”
Added the scout: “I think that comes back to the roster issue of he can’t consistently do it over an 82-game stretch at his age. And he needs help … and he doesn’t have help.”
