- Feb 5, 2013
- 39,387
- 40,878
a lot of ppl doubted his shot coming into the season
but its been on so far
and i give him the edge of the defensive side
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
but its been on so far
and i give him the edge of the defensive side
- Jun 4, 2016
- 8,976
- 20,596
- Mar 20, 2017
- 24,026
- 31,504
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,395
- 45,155
I just hope we can keep Lonnie and AR this offseason.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,942
- 129,293
Hollinger:
How Davis’ MVP turn affects Lakers’ deals
It’s hard enough for an NBA front office to make good decisions in the relative calm of the offseason. But in the regular season? Said task becomes infinitely more difficult. Hot and cold streaks become hard to separate from the underlying realities, with the inclination to overreact to the most recent result all but overwhelming even for the most rational-minded. Inevitably, front offices spend these days asking whether they’re as good (or bad) as they’ve looked lately or if they’re just getting (un)lucky.
Take the Lakers, for example, and the constant, roiling, will-they-or-won’t-they dilemma regarding trading for more help around LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
This whole premise seemed laughable a month ago, when the team was 2-10 and had been soundly beaten twice by the Utah Jazz.
Now? Well, it’s at least something to talk about. The Lakers have won eight of 10, including consecutive road wins in Milwaukee and Washington over the weekend, and Davis has gone absolutely bananas. His 55-point, 17-rebound destruction of Washington — which lined up an All-Star caliber player against him in Kristaps Porziņģis — is the latest in a series of mind-blowing efforts from the L.A. big man. He had 44 against the mighty Bucks on Friday and lines of 37-18, 37-21 and 38-16 in this 10-game stretch.
Davis was good enough that the Lakers fans who infiltrated D.C. for the game serenaded him with MVP chants by the end of the game. For a team that’s 10-12, that might seem a bit rich … but is it? Davis tops the NBA with a 31.9 PER, just ahead of two-time MVP Nikola Jokić and Dallas’ Luka Dončić. He’s played 20 of the Lakers’ 22 games and leads the league in rebounding. He’s even shooting 83.2 percent from the line after dipping into the low 70s the past two seasons.
Along the way, he’s revived the original premise of the 2022-23 Lakers in the first place — that this team could possibly be a contender if Davis and James could play at an all-NBA level at the same time, and if it replaced one or two of its terrible players with good ones. That’s where it broke down over the past two years, with an oft-injured and frequently bricky Davis being a major factor in the Lakers’ declines to 42 and then 33 wins.
The Davis takeover has coincided with two other events — a move to center and a decreased emphasis on jump shots. No longer are the Lakers clogging space by playing a random scrub five next to Davis. The Lakers played Davis at center only 9 percent of the time in 2020-21; that improved to 76 percent a year ago, when the Lakers still pretended Davis was a four by having DeAndre Jordan start before letting Davis finish in the middle, and is now at 98 percent this season. He is a full-time five, and he’s awesome at it.
Even with horrific shooting around him, Davis has taken advantage of all the open space. Look at what he does to Porziņģis here for instance with an open middle, going to the righty runner going left that has become a Davis staple.
Here he gets matched up against Corey Kispert in transition, sees fresh Wagyu and immediately attacks down Main Street for a bucket and-1. Again, this is only possible because there isn’t a big lug sitting in the charge circle gumming up the works.
Even when he goes to the jumper, he’s shooting it from shorter range than the long pick-and-pops and isos that were a previous staple. Davis on non-rim-2s inside 14 feet is a respectable 47 percent this season, according to Cleaning The Glass, and hit 48 percent in 2020-21. (Side note to Washington: You wanna maybe double team and force one of these other bricklayers to shoot it? Nah? OK.)
Of equal import, playing the five means Davis doesn’t have to provide the space. He splashed a 3 in Washington on Sunday but has only attempted 27 of them the entire season — about half as often as the previous three seasons.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of his shots this season are at the rim, according to Cleaning The Glass, compared to just 32 percent in 2020-21; it’s his highest total since he was a 19-year-old rookie in New Orleans. Davis is 29 now, and that’s not usually how this works; typically, players drift farther from the rim as they age.
This is significant because Davis is replacing his worst shots with his best ones. He took 23 percent of his shots from midrange beyond 14 feet each of the previous two seasons; that’s down to 12 percent this season. He hasn’t shot better than 38 percent from that range since 2016-17, but he’s shooting 76 percent — twice as accurate! — at the rim.
Finally, playing the five has also freed him up to crash the boards. Davis’ 10.6 percent offensive rebound rate is the best of his career and phenomenal for a high-usage player. Among players with a usage rate over 25, the next closest is Porziņģis at 7.6.
It’s easier for him to rebound, of course, when he’s shooting so close to the rim in the first place. Look at this second bounce here!
Of course, maybe we need to calm everybody down for a minute. Yes, the Lakers have won eight of 10. Three of those games were against the Spurs, who have quietly turned into epic tank commanders. (Fun fact: San Antonio has lost 16 of 17, with defeats by 43, 38, 37 37, 31, 25, 22, 19, 18, 18 and 17. On Sunday, the Spurs trailed by 30 at halftime on their home floor.) One of the other wins was at home against 6-19 Detroit. Washington lost Bradley Beal five minutes into the game on Sunday and, also, they’re the Wizards. And the Lakers still lost at home to the Pacers in this stretch.
Bigger-picture, the rule of thumb is that you don’t just get to count a team’s best games and ignore the rest. That’s not how this works. Even after this recent hot streak, the Lakers are in 12th place in the West, with the underlying stats of a team that will finish with a win total in the high 30s.
As good as Davis has been, the rest of his team still looks pretty bad. Russell Westbrook, for instance, has improved a bit from his disastrous start, helped by coming off the bench and a budding pick-and-roll chemistry with Davis. On the other hand, they’re paying him $47 million to mostly be a below-average offensive player.
It’s not just Westbrook. Patrick Beverley has seemingly forgotten how to shoot, missing the basket by roughly 94 feet on his first attempt on Sunday and mired at 22.2 percent from 3 for the season; he’s also mostly been a parody of his former self on defense, making mean-mug tough-guy faces while fouling guys 50 feet from the basket and vociferously arguing the obvious call. Kendrick Nunn looked like he might help in preseason; he emphatically hasn’t. Lonnie Walker IV and Austin Reaves have at least provided enough shooting to keep defenses somewhat honest (39.0 percent and 38.7 percent, respectively), but realistically, the Lakers need backcourt upgrades and a real small forward.
But the awfulness of the secondary players is also where the promise lies: The improvement for L.A. from a trade like this would be much more dramatic than for, say, Memphis or New Orleans. The Lakers would likely pay a massive price (unprotected first-round picks in 2027 and 2029) to convert either Westbrook or Beverley into a knockdown shooter and a perimeter playmaker, but the upside of that approach is maxing out the tail end of James’ prime and an MVP-caliber season from Davis.
Regardless of the recent vibes, justifying such a risky investment requires something more than a 10-12 start, and the Lakers likely have some time to collect more information do that before trading season begins in earnest next month.
This is why the upcoming slate for L.A feels like such a defining stretch. The Lakers’ next three games are roadies in Cleveland, Toronto and Philadelphia. Looming later in December are matchups against Boston, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami and Atlanta, not to mention a road trip to suddenly mighty Sacramento. They won’t see the Spurs for 27 more games; they’ll have to beat real basketball teams to sustain their recent mojo.
By the end of the month, we’ll have a much better idea of whether Davis’ MVP-caliber play is the jolt the Lakers needed to justify a costly investment in upgrading the rest of the roster … or whether it’s a minor, brief uptick in the arc of a mediocre team’s grind. The implications for the trade deadline couldn’t hardly be bigger.
It’s hard enough for an NBA front office to make good decisions in the relative calm of the offseason. But in the regular season? Said task becomes infinitely more difficult. Hot and cold streaks become hard to separate from the underlying realities, with the inclination to overreact to the most recent result all but overwhelming even for the most rational-minded. Inevitably, front offices spend these days asking whether they’re as good (or bad) as they’ve looked lately or if they’re just getting (un)lucky.
Take the Lakers, for example, and the constant, roiling, will-they-or-won’t-they dilemma regarding trading for more help around LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
This whole premise seemed laughable a month ago, when the team was 2-10 and had been soundly beaten twice by the Utah Jazz.
Now? Well, it’s at least something to talk about. The Lakers have won eight of 10, including consecutive road wins in Milwaukee and Washington over the weekend, and Davis has gone absolutely bananas. His 55-point, 17-rebound destruction of Washington — which lined up an All-Star caliber player against him in Kristaps Porziņģis — is the latest in a series of mind-blowing efforts from the L.A. big man. He had 44 against the mighty Bucks on Friday and lines of 37-18, 37-21 and 38-16 in this 10-game stretch.
Davis was good enough that the Lakers fans who infiltrated D.C. for the game serenaded him with MVP chants by the end of the game. For a team that’s 10-12, that might seem a bit rich … but is it? Davis tops the NBA with a 31.9 PER, just ahead of two-time MVP Nikola Jokić and Dallas’ Luka Dončić. He’s played 20 of the Lakers’ 22 games and leads the league in rebounding. He’s even shooting 83.2 percent from the line after dipping into the low 70s the past two seasons.
Along the way, he’s revived the original premise of the 2022-23 Lakers in the first place — that this team could possibly be a contender if Davis and James could play at an all-NBA level at the same time, and if it replaced one or two of its terrible players with good ones. That’s where it broke down over the past two years, with an oft-injured and frequently bricky Davis being a major factor in the Lakers’ declines to 42 and then 33 wins.
The Davis takeover has coincided with two other events — a move to center and a decreased emphasis on jump shots. No longer are the Lakers clogging space by playing a random scrub five next to Davis. The Lakers played Davis at center only 9 percent of the time in 2020-21; that improved to 76 percent a year ago, when the Lakers still pretended Davis was a four by having DeAndre Jordan start before letting Davis finish in the middle, and is now at 98 percent this season. He is a full-time five, and he’s awesome at it.
Even with horrific shooting around him, Davis has taken advantage of all the open space. Look at what he does to Porziņģis here for instance with an open middle, going to the righty runner going left that has become a Davis staple.
Here he gets matched up against Corey Kispert in transition, sees fresh Wagyu and immediately attacks down Main Street for a bucket and-1. Again, this is only possible because there isn’t a big lug sitting in the charge circle gumming up the works.
Even when he goes to the jumper, he’s shooting it from shorter range than the long pick-and-pops and isos that were a previous staple. Davis on non-rim-2s inside 14 feet is a respectable 47 percent this season, according to Cleaning The Glass, and hit 48 percent in 2020-21. (Side note to Washington: You wanna maybe double team and force one of these other bricklayers to shoot it? Nah? OK.)
Of equal import, playing the five means Davis doesn’t have to provide the space. He splashed a 3 in Washington on Sunday but has only attempted 27 of them the entire season — about half as often as the previous three seasons.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of his shots this season are at the rim, according to Cleaning The Glass, compared to just 32 percent in 2020-21; it’s his highest total since he was a 19-year-old rookie in New Orleans. Davis is 29 now, and that’s not usually how this works; typically, players drift farther from the rim as they age.
This is significant because Davis is replacing his worst shots with his best ones. He took 23 percent of his shots from midrange beyond 14 feet each of the previous two seasons; that’s down to 12 percent this season. He hasn’t shot better than 38 percent from that range since 2016-17, but he’s shooting 76 percent — twice as accurate! — at the rim.
Finally, playing the five has also freed him up to crash the boards. Davis’ 10.6 percent offensive rebound rate is the best of his career and phenomenal for a high-usage player. Among players with a usage rate over 25, the next closest is Porziņģis at 7.6.
It’s easier for him to rebound, of course, when he’s shooting so close to the rim in the first place. Look at this second bounce here!
Of course, maybe we need to calm everybody down for a minute. Yes, the Lakers have won eight of 10. Three of those games were against the Spurs, who have quietly turned into epic tank commanders. (Fun fact: San Antonio has lost 16 of 17, with defeats by 43, 38, 37 37, 31, 25, 22, 19, 18, 18 and 17. On Sunday, the Spurs trailed by 30 at halftime on their home floor.) One of the other wins was at home against 6-19 Detroit. Washington lost Bradley Beal five minutes into the game on Sunday and, also, they’re the Wizards. And the Lakers still lost at home to the Pacers in this stretch.
Bigger-picture, the rule of thumb is that you don’t just get to count a team’s best games and ignore the rest. That’s not how this works. Even after this recent hot streak, the Lakers are in 12th place in the West, with the underlying stats of a team that will finish with a win total in the high 30s.
As good as Davis has been, the rest of his team still looks pretty bad. Russell Westbrook, for instance, has improved a bit from his disastrous start, helped by coming off the bench and a budding pick-and-roll chemistry with Davis. On the other hand, they’re paying him $47 million to mostly be a below-average offensive player.
It’s not just Westbrook. Patrick Beverley has seemingly forgotten how to shoot, missing the basket by roughly 94 feet on his first attempt on Sunday and mired at 22.2 percent from 3 for the season; he’s also mostly been a parody of his former self on defense, making mean-mug tough-guy faces while fouling guys 50 feet from the basket and vociferously arguing the obvious call. Kendrick Nunn looked like he might help in preseason; he emphatically hasn’t. Lonnie Walker IV and Austin Reaves have at least provided enough shooting to keep defenses somewhat honest (39.0 percent and 38.7 percent, respectively), but realistically, the Lakers need backcourt upgrades and a real small forward.
But the awfulness of the secondary players is also where the promise lies: The improvement for L.A. from a trade like this would be much more dramatic than for, say, Memphis or New Orleans. The Lakers would likely pay a massive price (unprotected first-round picks in 2027 and 2029) to convert either Westbrook or Beverley into a knockdown shooter and a perimeter playmaker, but the upside of that approach is maxing out the tail end of James’ prime and an MVP-caliber season from Davis.
Regardless of the recent vibes, justifying such a risky investment requires something more than a 10-12 start, and the Lakers likely have some time to collect more information do that before trading season begins in earnest next month.
This is why the upcoming slate for L.A feels like such a defining stretch. The Lakers’ next three games are roadies in Cleveland, Toronto and Philadelphia. Looming later in December are matchups against Boston, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami and Atlanta, not to mention a road trip to suddenly mighty Sacramento. They won’t see the Spurs for 27 more games; they’ll have to beat real basketball teams to sustain their recent mojo.
By the end of the month, we’ll have a much better idea of whether Davis’ MVP-caliber play is the jolt the Lakers needed to justify a costly investment in upgrading the rest of the roster … or whether it’s a minor, brief uptick in the arc of a mediocre team’s grind. The implications for the trade deadline couldn’t hardly be bigger.
You mean like that team that hired a first time coach and went to the Finals his first year? Then they fired that guy and put another random guy in his place and they have the best record in the NBA?
Strange. Seems like any ol' guy can sit on a bench and the team still wins.
Hell, Kerr racked up a few playoff wins from his couch just 6 months ago. But hey. Give credit to Ham for AD playing like a monster while discrediting Vogel for AD being in street clothes 50% of the time. Seems reasonable to me. If Kerr can get wins in his robe, no reason we can't blame another coach for not winning with his best players out all the time.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,942
- 129,293
- May 17, 2007
- 25,152
- 23,981
Forget AD, forget the 3 Celtics coaches (they’re all good coaches, I’d love for any of em to coach the Lakers, esp Hardy)
Ain’t no ******* way in hell Vogel would ever get Russ to play like this. Russ didn’t respect him.
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,395
- 45,155
MVP
Supporter
- Feb 28, 2008
- 83,040
- 85,631
So he apologized, Silver said he wasn’t antisemetic, his owner said that, Amazon said the movie is staying up on the platform…. But because of all the heat to “denounce antisemitism in all its forms” Kyrie loses a shoe deal and 11M a year.
Yikes... "They" don't play no games.
akajae
formerly akajaedeuce
- Sep 2, 2005
- 19,217
- 28,704
wasn't he losing his shoe deal before the stupid tweet?
- Mar 20, 2017
- 24,026
- 31,504
Yes
Hijo Del Promo
formerly xxhu5sl1npnoyxx
- Sep 10, 2002
- 9,854
- 7,082
This Pyramid sits on the Tier 0 Caruso Level.
Caruso still the GOAT Laker of All-Time.
He had everything except the skills and stats, yet made one of the BIGGEST impacts in Lakers history.
darthska
Staff member
- Apr 30, 2004
- 47,039
- 31,714
I think he was in the final year of his contract.
- Mar 20, 2017
- 24,026
- 31,504
Yea and they said from jump they wasn’t renewing with him
It's comical man.
Russ "respects" this first time head coach.......not the guy that won a title a year earlier.
And "play like this".......he's shooting 40% and we're banging the drum for him.
2 weeks ago every person in this thread was tryin to figure out where to trade him except MVP. (a longtime fan of his) But yea, during this AD hot stretch against the Spurs, Pistons, and Wizards without Beal, we've been great, RESPECT!!!!
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,395
- 45,155
Look what yall started....
- Jan 2, 2010
- 82,843
- 118,406
DHam might be the first coach Russ respects. Russ know he won't win that fight.
I'm fine. It's just funny to me. Coaching SOOOOOO important.......that I have multiple examples of random dudes walkin in off the street to coach and they have great teams and win like crazy.
Great coaches have crap rosters and suddenly ain't so great anymore.
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,395
- 45,155
Are you arguing that coaching don't matter fam? I'd say look at the year Nate McMillan took over for Lloyd Pierce in the middle of the Hawks' season. They literally looked like two different teams and the only thing that changed was the coach.I'm fine. It's just funny to me. Coaching SOOOOOO important.......that I have multiple examples of random dudes walkin in off the street to coach and they have great teams and win like crazy.
Great coaches have crap rosters and suddenly ain't so great anymore.
Edit: or are you just vouching for Vogel? I agree that Vogel is a good coach, he had the Pacers looking great and also wom a ring here but some things just run their course.
- Apr 24, 2006
- 18,756
- 13,108
