Eight games down, four rounds to go for the Los Angeles Lakers. With the final of the regular season against the Sacramento Kings on Thursday in Thursday’s books, the no. 1st seed of the Western Conference their attention on the postseason. The next game the Lakers play will actually count in their quest for a 17th championship.
But before we fully look forward to what’s coming, let’s look back at the eight games that were just and try to take some lessons in the playoffs. What have we learned during the first eight Laker games since March? Here are the five biggest takeaways from the past eight games.
1. Dion Waiters is for real
Laugh everything you want, and yes, some of it is guaranteed. He still makes baffling defensive mistakes. He takes one or two absolutely mystifying shots per game … and that’s less than the Lakers probably expected. Waiters is a running mom.
He is also a consistently positive force for the Lakers when he steps on the court, even if his own figures do not necessarily reflect that. Through his first 166 minutes in Orlando, the Lakers shook opponents by 17 points with Waiters on the floor. That gave him the best net rating among Lakers at Disney except Jared Dudley, who barely played. Defenses respect him enough as a shooter not to shy away from him, prompting Anthony Davis’ post-ups that make the Lakers confident as LeBron sits. They respect him enough as a driver to really get him on the track, and he has taken advantage of that by passing something refreshingly decent. Kuzma has found several clean 3-point looks through his ball handling.
And he does it despite an incredibly slow shot start. He made just four of his first 24 3-pointers. That number began to climb back to his career average with a 3 out of 6 shown on Thursday and assuming that continues, the Lakers will, at last, have a score-first guard who can send the offense into the precarious LeBron-less minutes that have plagued her all year. Make all the jokes you want, but Dion Waiters is an essential part of the Lakers’ hopeful championship.
2. Kyle Kuzma has established himself as the third best Laker
Beyond LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the Lakers had for the most part sidekick-by-commission gone through the regular season. Different players stepped up at different moments, and it worked normally. Avery Bradley’s 24 points were the key in their first win over the Clippers. They went 14-1 when Rajon Rondo scored in double figures. The two stars did their job night in, night out, while several players jumped with each go-round on the third seat of the carousel. It worked. It was also not sustainable. The crux of the post season is unusual for role players. Someone had to come up permanently in the third seat.
That’s what Kyle Kuzma did in Orlando. Everyone else played obliviously in the boiling games, but Kuzma struts the best stretch of his career together. He averaged double figures on efficient shooting, beat a game-winner, found direct chemistry with Waiters and Alex Caruso off the bench and, eventually, he developed into a consistently positive defender, one who can take harder forward tackles out of his hands. of LeBron for a while and can stand his ground even against unfavorable switches.
The idea that Kuzma needed a star was always sought out. Nobody has three stars at the moment, and even if they did, who cares if LeBron and Davis are the two best players in the NBA? What the Lakers really needed was a gap-filler, someone to do a lot of things well instead of a few things exceptionally. The Disney version of Kuzma has given the Lakers a bit of everything. He is fit in virtually every lineup. He has been their third best player by embracing the idea of not being a star, but rather being a useful part of everything the Lakers do. If that persists, the biggest question the Lakers have had all season is answered.
3. The absence of Avery Bradley hurts more than expected
There came a legitimate argument in the bubble that suggested the Lakers really should not miss Avery Bradley. He shot well above his head down to the stretch of the original season. As valuable as his man-to-man defense is, his lack of size makes him tired of a liability in assist situations that his teams generally don’t take much off on that end of the floor when he sits. More minutes for Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were theoretically a good thing.
And then the Lakers ran in a string of observers, and this happened:
And that’s why we learned a valuable lesson here: perhaps the best point-of-attack defender in basketball is, shockingly, helpful. It turns out you can get away with starting a suspected assistant defender if you also have LeBron James and Anthony Davis, two of the NBA’s best in that regard.
So this begs the question: who deserves the Bradley role against primary ball-dealers? There is no right answer. Alex Caruso is the best defender of the attack left among the Laker guards, but is small enough to be pestered by larger guards. Danny Green has the size for it, but he is not as fast as he once was, and has been fighting elite one-on-one scorers all season. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope would have been perfect a few years ago when he was among the best defensive guards in the NBA. He is noticeably slippery this season.
That Frank Vogel will experiment. The answer will ultimately be reliance on matchups. They did not find an answer for Harden, for example, but Kyle Kuzma did well against Russell Westbrook. Green has held his own against Paul for years. It takes a village to defend Damian Lillard. Fortunately, the later rounds will probably not be too protective. All things considered, the Bradley-less Lakers are happy to have Kawhi Leonard and Giannis Antetokounmpo for them instead of Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving. All four face matchup issues, but the Lakers would much rather take their chances with attackers given their roster construction than roll the dice on smaller guards without Bradley.
4. Dwight Howard passed JaVale McGee in the pecking order
I present to you, the bubble JaVale McGee experience in one three minute stretch. Essentially back-to-back-to-back, McGee has started an irregular charge …
In dunk mist …
And fumbled away a rebound that led to free points.
This has been the norm in Orlando. McGee has never been exactly known for his basketball IQ, but some of those mistakes are simply memorable. Basic slip screens should not start NBA centers.
McGee has been the right season for a start. The starting lineup that Bradley recorded was one of the best units for five men in basketball, and opponents outscores with 12.6 points per 100 possessions. JaVale tends to play better when he has given more minutes. While a case of pneumonia did not help matters, he played terrible after Ivica Zubac replaced him in the starting lineup last season, but rebounded (literally and figuratively) once Zubac was traded. Initially, JaVale helps them feel full. That’s when he can actually contribute.
But even as a starter in Orlando, he has been a huge liability for the Lakers. They were outscored during his minutes in every seeding match where he participated, including a -20 haircut in the final. Something here is not working.
Fortunately, it does not matter. The Lakers will eventually trim their rotation. Davis will play more minutes at center, and the Lakers will only need one other great man to fill the minutes he sits outside. At this point, there’s no good reason for that big man to be McGee. All season long it has become clear that the best Laker center not named Davis is Dwight Howard.
The Lakers basically played opponents after a postseason with Howard on the floor in Orlando, a win seen as those are bank minutes they just have to survive. He has shot nearly 10 percentage points higher than McGee all season, is a better rebounder, moves more easily defensively on the perimeter and in the simplest terms, does not do so many stupid things. The Lakers know exactly what they’re getting from Howard on any given night: several dunes, adequate defense and gruesome offensive rebounding. They have no idea what they’re getting from McGee. The playoffs are not a time for that kind of risk taking. If it counts, Dwight will get the minutes from non-Davis center.
5. The Lakers’ championship still hopes to rest with LeBron
According to LeBron standards, the numbers have been relatively pedestrian. The list of players who can disappointingly average 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists (excluding his first half only Thursday) is short, but if the standard is “best basketball player on Earth”, the bar is usually high. At times, James removed it. His defense against the Clippers was perhaps the best he has played since his Miami days. The score ratcheted up in the last few games. The Lakers did not have much to play for. He should be forgiven for taking things slow. But the Lakers struggled to score and have a less than optimal version of LeBron going hand in hand. All season they have been going where he has taken them.
Reconciling the version of LeBron that angered the Clippers and Bucks right before the closing and the version we’ve seen since in Florida is not easy. One was without a doubt the best player in the world. The other … jogged his way through a handful of games that would do nothing else. James spoke openly about the negative impact the shutdown had on his body. Re-arranging for a playoff run after four months off at the age of 35 is literally unusual. We have no idea if James is 100 percent of the player he was in March or something closer to 50.
The answer to that question is what will ultimately determine the fate of the Lakers’ playoffs. The last time we saw LeBron in the playoffs, he averaged 34 points, nine assists and nine rebounds. That was where he was trending before the season stopped, and seeing the weak points this roster still has, that’s roughly who he needs to be for the Lakers to win the championship. The tune-up games are in the rearview mirror. Soon we will know if Peak LeBron still exists, or if the King’s throne has been removed once and for all.
