Why Hasn't Los Angeles Lakers Defense Improved Under Byron Scott?
The Los Angeles Lakers have become no stranger to finger-pointing.
And their uninspired defense remains public enemy No. 1.
Just eight games into a disheartening 1-7 start to the 2014-15 campaign, head coach Byron Scott's team is allowing opponents to make 49.8 percent of their field-goal attempts—a mark that ranks dead last league-wide.
According to Hollinger Stats, the 114.4 points per 100 possessions Los Angeles gives up also rank 30th in the NBA.
After a 109-102 loss the the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday, Scott opened up about his club's defensive woes—woes that were arguably inherited from the Mike D'Antoni regime and a notoriously porous resistance that allowed a 28th-best 107.9 points per 100 possessions a season ago.
"[The Pelicans] got pretty much anything they wanted in the paint with no resistance whatsoever," he told reporters after the game (via ESPN). "It was just terrible. That was probably the worst defense that we've played from the preseason all the way to this particular point."
For the record, Los Angeles has already given up at least 112 points during a stretch of four consecutive games this season. That streak included a 127-point eruption by the Golden State Warriors that speaks to the scale of this team's desperation.
"We're not even close to our expectations, or at least mine," Scott added. "Like I said, we've just got to keep working. I know our guys are thinking a lot. We've got to get out of that pattern. But the effort has to be there and we have to play with a little more grit. That's the bottom line."
Los Angeles allowed the Pelicans to score 60 points in the paint, paving the way for an efficient 54.9 percent success rate from the field. Whatever the culprit, this team isn't getting the job done despite an offseason spent emphasizing the need for progress on the defensive end.
Indeed, Scott was hitting all the key talking points this summer, apparently to little avail.
In August, Scott told The Dan Patrick Show (h/t the Los Angeles Times' Eric Pincus), "I expect us to compete every night. [The Lakers are] going to play a tough, physical brand of basketball, and we're going to play defense."
He sent a similar message to Southern California Public Radio KPCC's A. Martinez in September.
"I've texted guys, I've had other guys that I've texted tell the guys that they're with, you know, 'Let him know that this is how it's going to be, and we're going to play defense every single night,' and the response has been good—has been great," Scott said at the time.
Scott also came with a plan. One may question its results to this point, but there's little doubt the new skipper has devoted a healthy share of practice to the possibility of defensive renewal.
"Defensive philosophy has to be constant," Scott told NBA.com's Mike Trudell in August. "This is no knock on Mike [D'Antoni] at all, but there were games where they were playing defense one way, and other games where they played it differently.
"When I go into the season, there are three ways we're going to guard side pick-and-rolls, for example: we're going to down it, hard show, or red it [trap]. If you do it from day one, guys get better at it because they're working on it every day in practice. I want to establish those things day-to-day, and if you do that, it takes a lot of the thinking away and gets back to reacting."
It's too soon to say whether these Lakers can learn some new tricks, but getting the schemes right appears to be the first priority of what may be a relatively protracted process.
There's little margin for error when it comes to this team's defensive execution. This roster isn't especially long, quick or athletic. It isn't well-equipped to protect the rim, and it doesn't boast a perimeter stopper (not one in his prime anyway).
As CBSSports.com's Matt Moore sarcastically put it in July, "But hey, at last Scott has defensive stalwarts like Carlos Boozer, Nick Young and Ryan Kelly around to really lock down. We'll see what kind of magic Scott can pull off in L.A."
That magic principally involves making the most of the players with whom he has to work. Injured point guard Steve Nash recently suggested that last season's problems had more to do with those players than anything D'Antoni was—or wasn't—doing.
"Last year, we put a lot of time into defense," he told reporters in October, per the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina. "Some of it has to come down to personnel. That's where we struggled defensively last year."
And that's where they could continue to struggle, particularly without dominant size serving as a backstop.
"We can't force everything defensively to [Jordan] Hill or [Carlos] Boozer, so we'll focus more on forcing guys to certain places and corral them instead of trying to block shots," Scott told Trudell. "What I see during the first few days of practice will make an impact there, so we can have an identity on that end of the floor."
That kind of team defense is especially critical when facing the pick-and-roll.
"You're going to have to play a lot of help the helper to keep the ball from getting into the paint," he added. "That's a lot of rotations, a lot of help, a lot of stunt and recover, where the guy with the ball sees one-and-a-half or two defenders every single time. You want to clog up the paint as much as possible and make the opponent take contested jump shots."
Maybe things would be different if Dwight Howard was still around to clean up mistakes made by perimeter defenders. Unfortunately, that's not the world these Lakers are living in.
Nor is Kobe Bryant—a nine-time member of the NBA All-Defensive First Team—the stopper he once was. According to Basketball-Reference.com, his minus-4.3 defensive box plus-minus (a strong indicator of individual defensive contributions) is by far his worst ever, a significant dip from his minus-0.5 career average.
To put those numbers in perspective, Tony Allen's DBPM is 4.9 so far this season, and he's one of the best lockdown perimeter defenders in the business. Bryant isn't getting it done like he used to. One ball fake from Trevor Ariza sent him flying in the season opener against the Houston Rockets.
Kobe won't single-handedly solve L.A.'s defensive quagmire, and unfortunately he doesn't have much help.
Per NBA.com, the Chicago Bulls' exceptional defense gave up 99.2 points per 100 possessions when Boozer was on the floor a season ago, three points worse than the 96.2 it allowed when he wasn't. His uneven effort and lack of imposing size made it difficult for head coach Tom Thibodeau to play him more than his 28.2 minutes per game, and Boozer typically spent fourth quarters on the bench.
At the moment, Los Angeles has to hope the 27-year-old Hill becomes more of a force in the painted area than he was a season ago, when his 2.05 blocks per 48 minutes ranked 36th league-wide, per ESPN.com.
That wasn't terrible production by any means. Reigning Defensive Player of the Year Joakim Noah ranked 35th with just 2.06 blocks per 48 minutes.
So perhaps Hill can make do as L.A.'s closest thing to a rim protector.
Perhaps Bryant can set a tone on the perimeter, inspiring improved effort from younger pieces like Jeremy Lin and Wesley Johnson.
Slim though it may seem, there's still a chance these players make Scott's life a little easier.
In the meantime, they'll have to adopt a fundamentally sound approach wherein rotations are crisper and closeouts come on time. With some additional polish and buy-in, that evolution could make up for this group's limitations.
"You have teams on paper that have all the talent in the world to be a great defensive team, and they're horrible," Scott told the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina. "Other teams, not so much and they have a fantastic defense. It really depends how we prepare and scheme together as a group."
The Lakers also need to control the things they can control, playing with the kind of energy that disrupts offense and tracks down loose balls. At the moment, Los Angeles ranks 15th in both opponent rebounds and opponent turnovers. Even worse, the Lakers rank 25th in rebounding differential.
When it comes to the possession battle, Scott's team hasn't asserted itself. And when it comes to the little things that make winning possible, it hasn't proved itself.
A learning curve is one thing, an unavoidable consequence of yet another coaching experiment. But inconsistent effort is quite another, and there's no telling whether Scott can turn that around.
No one expected this defense to be the league's best from day one. We just had a perhaps ill-founded expectation that it wouldn't be its worst either.
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