On the Offensive: What Happened to the Los Angeles Lakers Defense?

Since their last loss, the Lakers have been pulling a Lamar Odom on defense—spectacular at times, horrible at others, but most of the time nobody really notices.

They've still been winning games, but not always blowing teams away. Their lack of effort on defense has been the reason why there haven't been blowouts like the Lakers were racking up at the beginning of the season.

At the beginning of the season, the Lakers were staunch on defense from minute one to minute forty-eight. Guys not known for defense, like Vlad Rad and Farmar, were playing great defense. 

Ever since that loss to Detroit, I've only seen great defense during the runs where the Lakers build their leads. After that, it just seems like they lose focus. The loss to the Pacers was bound to happen. You could almost see that one coming as they turned the ball over time after time in the fourth, and as TJ Ford made his way to the paint. Then finally, Troy Murphy handed the Lakers their second loss of the season—say please and thank you, Lakers. 

Even if their offense has been great this season, they still have lapses in execution that have led to prolonged scoring droughts. Even then, with a guy named Kobe Bryant on their team, they really don't have to worry too much about the offense. Everyone, sans Lamar Odom, knows their role on offense well and does what they're supposed to do.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the defense. They've spent so much time over the past couple years figuring out the triangle, I guess they forgot to spend time learning defense. They finally input a system this year, so when they finally put it all together like they've done the offense, look out league!

I'm still slightly pissed off about the loss to Indiana, because they had the win, then gave it away because of their lack of focus on both ends of the floor. Then I remembered how young this team is, and realized that they will have games like this. Even though their biggest lesson learned was in Boston last season, sometimes they still need little reminders like that loss to the Pacers to keep their edge. 

The mark of a good team is how they rebound and respond to a loss like the one against the Pacers. Even though the Sixers aren't a very good team, it was still on the road, which means they need to be able to focus throughout to pull out a win.

Despite their sporadic defense, they were able to maintain their offensive output, and play good enough defense to pull out the victory. They stayed focused throughout, which shows growth and maturity.

We'll see if the Lakers can close out this Eastern Conference road trip with the defense we know they can play. The Wizards, despite the loss of Eddie Jordan, have enough talent to surprise the Lakers if taken lightly.

The key?  Focus on the D, and the D will set them free!

Cheesy, I know, but true.