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On September 6, the Los Angeles Lakers tied their second-round series against the Houston Rockets, thanks to a combined 62 points from LeBron James and Anthony Davis and an astonishing first-quarter run led by Rajon Rondo and Markieff Morris. In a Zoom conference call the next day, coach Frank Vogel said the ways they wanted to attack Houston were becoming clearer. Vogel loved his energy and commitment to the defensive game plan.
At the time, there were grounds for skepticism. Beyond the seemingly miraculous things about Rondo and Morris, Los Angeles was lucky enough to have Rockets guard Russell Westbrook hit seven 3s, missed six and turned the ball seven times. The Lakers won 117-109, but only after losing the 21-point lead they had built in the first half. If Westbrook had played a merely average game, rather than an actively damaging one, the popular conclusion would be that Los Angeles couldn’t handle Houston’s “unconventional” attack.
Now that the Rockets have faded, left the bubble and parted ways with their coach, and we’ve seen the Los Angeles Clippers collapse more slowly and dramatically, the Lakers’ skepticism appears to be over 12 days old. But has Los Angeles answered all the questions you faced a couple of weeks ago? Are they about to annihilate the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference finals?
I say no. The win over Houston, which forced them to put aside their traditional centers, treat Westbrook like Tony Allen and catch James Harden late in pitch time, was impressive. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything about his chances against Denver, a team that presents completely different challenges.
Of the eight NBA writers from CBS Sports, I was the only one who chose the Nuggets to win the series. This is the case of Denver in the final:
1. Tailstock
Nuggets are nothing if not tough. It’s not just that they came back 3-1 in two consecutive series; is that they have kickbacks that they have been perfecting for years. Jokic and Murray are an offense unto themselves, as is the ecosystem of screens and cuts when Jokic has the ball at the elbow or in the post. Jokic’s shot allows them to play with five outs and Mason Plumlee’s pass allows them to play the same style with the second unit.
As wrong as rookie Michael Porter Jr. may have been in publicly criticizing Denver’s plays after Game 4, he was right about the need to be unpredictable and involve multiple players, including himself, on offense. Porter’s presence has given the Nuggets a new dimension, another scorer the defense has to worry about, another rescue option at the end of the shot clock. More important, however, is that Denver has vastly improved during the playoffs when it comes to masking his defensive flaws, and that Porter developed chemistry with Jokic in no time.
Stylistically, the Lakers could hardly be more different. Everyone knows that LeBron James is going to make the vast majority of plays, which is not a problem in and of itself – you don’t get extra points for a nice ball movement. The problem is, at worst, Los Angeles’ offense can be tight and stagnant. At half court, he was 19th in the regular season and 24th in the final third (from early February to the last seeded game). At 35, James had another MVP-caliber season, but it could have been even better if he hadn’t had to do so much.
There are layers upon layers of irony here. James might be the most versatile player in NBA history. You can attack him and Davis from virtually anywhere on the court, and in James’s days with the Miami Heat, he was also a devastating player off the ball. After James signed with the Lakers, then-Lakers president Magic Johnson said the roster was built for the playoffs: Johnson targeted players who could knock down defenses, rather than just surrounding James with shooters.
The experiment was a full-blown disaster. The 2018-19 Lakers could pass and dribble, but it didn’t matter because they couldn’t shoot and everyone (James, Rondo, Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, Lance Stephenson, Michael Beasley) wanted the ball. But Johnson was on to something: 3-and-D is no longer enough, and this year’s roster represents an overcorrection. After trading for Davis and signing Danny Green, the Lakers were so starved of players on the perimeter that they made James the nominal point guard. When they couldn’t force Darren Collison to retire from retirement or find a difference maker in the commercial market, they pulled Dion Waiters off the scrap heap.
If Los Angeles wings and centers were better passers, maybe it wouldn’t matter that James and Davis have to do so much of the heavy lifting. However, the biggest problem is that the stars still don’t have reliable shots around them. From the All-Star break to the end of the seeded games, the Lakers scored 30.9 percent of their 3s, the second-worst record in the NBA.
These flaws have taken a back seat of late. Los Angeles had no problem scoring against the dismal defense of the Portland Trail Blazers, at least after Game 1, and the same was true against the Rockets, whose heavily changed defense was not as connected as before in the game. bubble, particularly without Danuel House. Rondo gave the Lakers the added creator they were looking for, and getting the greats out of the mix, and out of the way, made life easier for everyone. Which brings us to …
2. The Lakers’ dilemma
Jokic changes everything. “We adjusted to a small ball team in the last series,” Vogel said Wednesday, “but I would hope we would get back in shape,” which implies that JaVale McGee or Dwight Howard or both would return to the rotation against Denver.
If this is the case, why would the Lakers offense look the same as it did in the Rockets series? When they play big alongside James and Davis, the book is out in Los Angeles: Go Back in Transition, Protect the Paint, Show Help Against the Stars, and Have RPGs Shoot Contested 3s or Put the Ball in the Game floor.
The Nuggets aren’t an elite defensive team, and it’s easy to point to Jokic’s pick-and-roll defense as a cause for concern. However, he is more vulnerable against fast point guards who shoot 3s, such as Donovan Mitchell. Jokic did well in the second round, and while James is better than anyone on the Clippers roster at manipulating defenses, he will have to do it despite Denver completely ignoring Rondo, disrespecting Davis’ three-point shot. and has a defender near the court. edge whenever a traditional center is on the court.
The Lakers’ two losses in the series opener didn’t predict the games that followed, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make sense. The mere fact that Portland so blatantly packed up the paint and dared anyone shooting 3s is revealing, as is this clip of James driving into traffic against Houston and then screaming over all the congestion:
The counter will again run out of centers. Los Angeles isn’t really little with Davis at the 5, anyway, as Kuzma pointed out Wednesday. And wasn’t the goal of playing Davis almost exclusively at 4 in the regular season that he would be fresh enough to face someone like Jokic now?
However, if I were the Nuggets, I’d be less concerned with Davis scoring Jokic one-on-one than with Davis exploiting the actions as a helping defender, as he did so effectively in the last round. Jokic’s shot could push Davis away from the paint, where he’s most disturbing, and give Murray more room to target Morris or a Lakers guard on pick-and-roll or isolated.
Without a traditional cross, Vogel could try a large dose of zone, or just hope he can trade 2 for 3. However, the former is extremely risky against a player like Jokic, and the latter is still scary despite the encouraging numbers. shooting from Los Angeles against the Rockets. If the Nuggets are as sharp as they were against the Clippers, the Lakers coaching staff will be stuck with imperfect options, trying to assess when they can afford to sacrifice defense for offense and vice versa. Which brings us to …
3. Denver’s coin for problem solving
There is an easy answer to all of this: Stop overthinking it, the Lakers have LeBron and AD.
I hate this way of thinking. He’s lazy and reduces a wonderfully complicated five-on-five game to a simple “NBA Jam” game. In this case, though, I can at least understand the logic: James has led teams less talented than this one to the Finals, and Davis is one of the top five to 10 players in the league, in the midst of a ridiculous playoff run. . . The better your top two players, the lower the bar for the supporting cast, and while the roster has gaps, its pieces basically fit together.
Rules of “NBA Jam”, but we alone saw Denver take down a team with Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. By the end of that series, the Nuggets knew exactly how they wanted to attack the Clippers, who, by contrast, seemed aimless, shapeless and desperate. The Clippers had a lot of depth on paper, but in the playoffs depth is only important to the extent that it solves problems. At this stage, each team is playing their best players for many minutes, and the name of the game is to find rosters that can perform at the championship level against whatever elite team you’re trying to send home. It is not enough that the pieces basically fit together.
The Nuggets don’t have LeBron or AD, but they have many things the Lakers don’t: a cohesive offensive system that encourages ball movement and player movement, a gravity-fed 7-foot superstar, a fearless star guard. that makes jerks. 3s, skillful cutters, two passing crosses and more than a couple of two-way RPGs. They also have the chemistry that comes with battle scars, which could be a particularly valuable coin this season.
“There’s no crowd (in the bubble) so you look at the teams,” Murray told The Athletic’s Sam Amick after eliminating the Clippers. “Who are the best teams? Who play better together? Who works the most together? Who can hit the best back? Who can hit the first hit? Who can stick together? Who falls apart? So I think That without the crowd, it makes a big difference. Start exposing, showing yourself, showing everyone what the teams are about. “
This is not to say that you don’t have questions about Denver. I wonder if Jokic will maintain his aggressiveness against the Lakers greats, how coach Michael Malone will approach the LeBron showdown, and if the Nuggets will succumb to exhaustion in another long series. However, none of my questions are as fundamental as the ones I have about his opponent: Can the Lakers play their starting or reserve center without sinking their offense? Will his backup point guard torpedo his defense? Are they going to completely collapse every time their best player is on the bench?
If Denver’s win against the Clippers turns out to be a mirage, then at least it was a superior mirage. The Nuggets showed us something that definitely exists: the brave and outrageously confident version of themselves that we’d seen on streaks during the first round and playoffs last year, but that might not be accessible against a Lakers team led by James. The Lakers’ victory over the Rockets, however, could be a lower miragelike the vision of a fountain in the desert. If the Lakers didn’t seem deep, versatile, and on track for the Finals 12 days ago, maybe it’s because they aren’t.
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