Summer Schooled: What the Los Angeles Lakers Learned from the Boston Celtics

If ever there was such a thing as a “Six-Game Sweep”, then we witnessed it in last season’s NBA Finals. A Celtics squad that had struggled mightily in their journey to the Finals humbled a Lakers team with an impressive 12-3 record through the first three rounds.

Call it overconfidence, cockiness, or arrogance. It didn’t take but two games for the Lake Show to realize that they had allowed themselves to believe all the hype surrounding them heading into their matchup with their storied rivals. The team that appeared to look like a cohesive and feisty unit running on all cylinders was quickly exposed as a green group of inexperienced novices.

So how do you bounce back when the whole world thinks that you’re fooling yourself by thinking the outcome would be any different if you earned yourself a rematch?

You can start by being the only people who never quite saw it that way.

Ask any of the Lakers to reflect on their series with the Celtics last summer and they won’t mention anything about a six-game sweep.

They will tell you that that they were only two wins shy of winning an NBA title—not exactly a lie. They’ll remind you that they did all that despite playing without homecourt advantage, without their emerging young center, and with their best perimeter defender not fully healed from a fractured foot that had sidelined him for the last three months of the regular season. No half-truths there either.

Some may call that denial, but around Staples Center they call it optimism. Talk about seeing the Gatorade bottle half full.

As a result, the Lakers have stormed out of the gate by winning 15 of their first 17 games—a stark contrast from the 9-8 record they had through their first 17 games last season.

Thanks to the Celtics, this year’s Lakers squad went into training camp with a newfound education in what it takes to win a championship.

Lesson One: Defense, Defense, Defense

So what exactly did the Lakers learn from the Celtics? For starters, they learned that offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.

If there was a watershed moment in last year’s Finals it would have to be Ray Allen flying by Sasha Vujacic for the uncontested layup that sealed the Game 4 comeback.

That one play summed up the entire series. It proved that the Celtics had the type of defense that could overcome a 24-point deficit on the road and the Lakers didn’t. Even after the Lakers won the next game it was difficult to entertain the thought of them actually winning one of the remaining two games in Boston, let alone both.

Throughout the regular season and the early rounds of the playoffs the Lakers had played good defense in spurts but they were nowhere near the Celtics. For the most part, Kobe and company had won games by outscoring their opponents rather than holding them to fewer points. The Celtics could beat you either way, but they did it mostly with defense—the kind that will kill your spirit.

After averaging 110.7 points per game during the regular season, the Lakers were held to under 100 points in every game of the series except Game 2, a game which had not only been decided in the third quarter but required a 41-point fourth quarter for the Lakers to reach the century mark.

Over the summer and without much attention, Phil Jackson appointed Kurt Rambis to be the Lakers own version of Tom Thibodeau, the Celtics assistant coach responsible for the league’s most impressive defensive unit.

If the Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett trades were the first major personnel moves that led to the Celtics turnaround, then the third would have to be the hiring of Tom Thibodeau. If Doc Rivers was Mike Ditka, then Thibodeau was his Buddy Ryan.

For the first time in his career, Jackson assigned defensive responsibility to one of his assistants. After weeks of scribbling ideas on bar napkins, Rambis convinced Jackson it was time to mix in some zone schemes with man-to-man—something Jackson had been resisting for years.

Their strategy this season has been to use pressure to force the opponent to one side of the court and then overload that side by putting an extra defender in the post. Even though this strategy leaves the weak side virtually unguarded, the length of the Lakers has enabled them to close off passing lanes and force turnovers.

The results of this new defensive strategy have been noticeable. The Lakers are giving up five fewer points per game compared to last season and have decreased their opponent’s field-goal percentage by two. They also lead the league in steals with 10.2 per game.

Lesson Two: You are Only as Good as Your Bench

One of the main reasons why so may pundits and prognosticators predicted the Lakers to win the series with Boston was because of their bench, and, yet, the Celtics bench outplayed them considerably.

Whether it was Leon Powe’s 21 points in Game 2 or James Posey’s 18 points in Game 4, the Celtics bench may have been the reason they won the series as handily as they did.

While many expected the Lakers to react by going out into the free agent market and signing a veteran to help solidify their bench and add experience, the team took a different approach by opting to start Vladimir Radmanovic at small forward over the more talented Lamar Odom or Trevor Ariza.

Odom and Ariza have combined to handle the role that Posey had by using the first few minutes to get a feel for the game from the bench and then playing whatever role is needed.

Nobody will ever confuse Odom’s defense with that of Posey’s, but it has definitely improved. Odom has increased his averages in both steals and blocks despite playing 12 fewer minutes per game.

Through his first fours seasons Ariza has been known primarily for his athleticism (remember this dunk on Grant Hill last Christmas?), but he's slowly being recognized as one of the league's most underrated defenders. He's the only player in the top-15 in the league in steals that isn't a starter.

Odom’s height provides the Lakers with someone who can guard all three frontcourt positions while Ariza’s quickness and length enable him to defend point guards or power forwards.

Lesson Three: Win Early, Win Often

Only twice since the NBA went to the 2-3-2 Finals format in 1985 has the team without home-court advantage won all of the middle three games. 

That didn’t bode well for the Lakers chances. After going down 0-2 to the Celtics, the Lakers had not only lost whatever momentum they had built up in the first three rounds but were faced with the arduous task of trying to win four out of five games against a team that had only lost 16 of 82 games during the regular season.

The Lakers are hoping that with the Celtics battling a much-improved Eastern Conference and with a full season of Pau Gasol, they can have home-court advantage the next time around.

There is no doubt that the Celtics and Lakers are keeping an eye on each other in the standings—making the battle for home-court advantage one of the season’s more interesting subplots.

Despite their obvious progress in certain areas, the Lakers are still very much a work in progress. The big question is whether they can play consistent defense all season long. After not allowing a hundred points to any of their first seven opponents, they’ve reverted back to last year’s defense at times and given up at least 100 points in six of their last 10 games.

The Christmas Day rematch should provide the first true glimpse into just how much progress the Lakers have made since last June.

Should the Lakers manage to make it to the mountaintop at the end of the season, they can look back and point to the drubbing they took in last year’s Finals as the moment where they found their blueprint for success—or should I say green-print.

This article also appears on FoxSports.com