Iztok Franko: Stats With Context: 40-Game Check

January 18, 2026 at 8:10 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Forty games in, nearly half a season under the belt, and it’s time for a 40-game check.

I always try to embed bits of big-picture context and emerging trends into game previews and post-game observations, but these checkpoints are where I step back to track meaningful shifts and evaluate the Lakers’ progress over the course of the season.

If the 10-game check was about perseverance and overcoming early-season injury woes, the 20-game check came at the high point of the season: an 8–2 run, a 15–5 record, and second place in the West — despite advanced numbers suggesting things looked better on the surface than they did under the hood.

Since then, those early warning signs on defense have only been reinforced. A new wave of injuries followed, most notably the calf strain to the team’s second-best scorer and key connector, Austin Reaves, and the Lakers now find themselves in free-fall.

The Lakers are 9–11 since the 20-game check, banged up, and heading into an eight-game road trip. Reinforcements of any kind, whether through health or outside help, feel increasingly necessary.

digginbasketball is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Today’s highlights:

Quick look at the Western Conference race

Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Still elite at a lot of things on offense

Defense so bad that even good offense is often not good enough

Injuries, rotation, and reality check

Luka and his three-point shooting trend

Questions and needs heading into the trade deadline

1-Quick look at the Western Conference race

Chart context: As always, we’ll start with a big-picture conference view before zooming in on the Lakers. A couple of quick observations:

The Thunder remain in a league of their own in point differential, though they no longer look quite as unbeatable as they did earlier in the season. The Rockets rank second in point differential and boast a top-five offense and defense, but late-game execution issues have them sitting only sixth in the standings.

Meanwhile, the Timberwolves, Nuggets, and Spurs are bunched tightly together, both in point differential and in the standings, forming a clear and compact top-five group in the West.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, what we’ve seen all season and what was partially masked by their still league-best 13–1 clutch record is that they don’t belong in that top-five group. Even more telling, despite still sitting a few wins ahead of the Suns and the Warriors, both teams have a significantly better point differential.

As the charts show, all of the Lakers’ direct competitors, meaning all of the aforementioned teams except the Nuggets, who have the league’s best offense, rank inside the NBA’s top ten defenses. The defining story of the Lakers over the last 20 games has been the opposite. Their defense has collapsed from roughly league average into bottom-five territory since our last check.

2-Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Stats context: I won’t go deep here, as we’ll dissect the offense and defense in the sections that follow. What matters at a high level is this: the Lakers are the only team above .500 with a negative point differential. Teams you would consider true contenders all sit at +5.0 or better, while the Lakers profile much closer to the average .500 team they have been over the last 20 games.

Injuries have clearly played a role. Absences for Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, and LeBron James earlier in the season, combined with Luka Dončić missing games in between, have taken a real toll. The Lakers simply have not had a fully healthy group for anything resembling a five or ten game stretch. But since James returned in mid-November, even during relatively healthy stretches or when JJ Redick leaned more heavily on defense-minded lineups, the Lakers’ defense has continued to show signs of structural flaws that will be very hard to overcome with the roster as currently constructed.

3–Still elite at a lot of things on offense

Stats context: At a glance, many aspects of the Lakers offense still look strong. They rank seventh overall and remain a top-three half-court attack. They have been the most efficient team inside the arc all season and continue to lead the league there, even if that efficiency has begun to trend slightly downward in recent weeks.

With Dončić and Reaves, the Lakers have consistently lived at the free-throw line. They still lead the league in free-throw rate, but that reliance is becoming riskier as league-wide foul calls continue to decline.

The problem for the Lakers is that there is not much else beyond that core efficiency. A lack of three-point shooting has been an issue all season, and they rank in the bottom five in three-point accuracy. They also turn the ball over too much and fail to create advantages on the margins, whether by crashing the offensive glass or consistently generating points in transition.

As a result, the offense tops out closer to good than truly elite. To survive with a defense like this, the Lakers would need an offense operating in the top-three range, closer to the model used by the Nuggets, rather than hovering around seventh.

4–Defense so bad that even good offense is often not good enough

Chart context: Why include an offensive trend chart in a section focused on defense? Because the story of the first half of the season was that when the offense clicked, everything else became survivable. Taking care of the ball and scoring efficiently allowed the Lakers to get set on defense and be just good enough on that end to win games. That formula held for a long stretch. Until the recent losses against the Hornets and Kings, the Lakers had won every game in which their offense performed above league average.

But the Lakers have run into two problems lately. First, they have struggled to generate good offense against strong defensive teams like the Rockets, Pistons, Spurs, and the Suns. Second, even against lesser opponents, the defense has degraded to a point where it cannot survive hot stretches. Teams like the Kings and the Hornets did not just get hot. They consistently created clean looks and turned DeMar DeRozan, LaMelo Ball, and Miles Bridges into unstoppable forces.

Since December 1st, the Lakers have been the second-worst defense in the NBA, trailing only the Jazz, a team clearly in a rebuilding phase and not prioritizing defense.

The Lakers currently lack both a defensive identity and identifiable defensive talent. They switch frequently, but do not have the foot speed to contain the ball, nor the awareness, length, or quickness to consistently provide help in the gaps. Once opponents beat the first line of defense, there is little resistance behind it. The Lakers are the worst rim-protecting team in the league, allowing 74 percent shooting on non-transition attempts at the rim, and they also rank bottom five in opponent field goal percentage in the paint.

5–Injuries, rotation, and reality check

Chart context: If we split the season into two 20-game segments, the most notable takeaway from the rotation is availability. Two of the three key players missed significant time, with James sidelined for much of the first stretch and Reaves absent for large portions of the second.

Hachimura was another rotation player who missed a key stretch recently, as did Jaxson Hayes. Beyond reinforcing how important Reaves is as the team’s clear second-most important player, those absences also exposed a roster reality. Hachimura’s shooting and Hayes’ athleticism are two skill sets that simply have no replacement on the current roster. Jarred Vanderbilt saw his minutes increase after falling out of the rotation earlier in the season, but his defensive impact was not nearly significant enough to change the overall makeup of the team. Nor was it enough to offset his shooting limitations, which often reduced the offense to a four-on-five uphill battle.

The other notable rotation development in recent games has been a decrease in trust in Deandre Ayton after his strong start to the season. Ayton had several games where his engagement on the defensive end and on the boards was hard to predict, and his involvement on offense also became a recurring storyline. That shift showed up late in games. JJ Redick notably closed a couple of fourth quarters with Hayes, while also praising his backup center for his effort and play. After his strong play earlier in the year, I mentioned that this season would be a referendum on Ayton. With a larger sample of games, it is becoming clearer that he is not the high-impact, high-effort defensive anchor this team desperately needs. At the same time, Dončić has looked noticeably more comfortable playing with Hayes as his lob-catching partner on the other end.

6–Luka and his three-point shooting trend

Chart context: Dončić opened the season hot with three consecutive 40-point games, but then had up-and-down stretches in December. The biggest problem for him offensively has been going through one of the longest three-point shooting slumps of the last couple of seasons, which became an issue as he was taking step-back threes at a league-leading rate early in the season.

Dončić has decreased his three-point volume, but has also recently regained trust in his outside shot. He is still at just 33.4 percent for the season, but has shot 43.2 percent over his last five games and 40.6 percent over his last seven. The way this team is currently built, Dončić and Reaves, once he returns, will have to shoot above 35 percent from three, preferably in the 38 to 40 percent range, for the Lakers to avoid being among the worst three-point shooting teams in the league and move closer to top-five offensive territory.

7–Questions and needs heading into the trade deadline

Stats context: I won’t go deep into the deadline here. I laid out my high-level expectations in the season-opening column, and I plan to dive deeper into specific archetypes and potential names as we get closer to the deadline.

From Transition to Vision: What 2026 Should Look Like for the Lakers
Iztok Franko
·
Jan 2
From Transition to Vision: What 2026 Should Look Like for the Lakers
I’m not a big New Year’s resolutions or wish list guy. But when my pal Marc Stein asked me to contribute to an initiative he is doing with Royce Webb, bringing together 12 NBA voices on Substack to share what we are looking forward to NBA-wise in 2026, I actually appreciated the challenge. It forced me to zoom out, an…

Read full story
A question I get often is whether the trade deadline can save this Lakers season and turn them into a contender. While I do think the Lakers should make a move, that would represent more of a first step toward building a team around Dončić and making them incrementally more competitive rather than a true fix.

Watching this team closely, the way they defend, the lack of connection, and even the loss of the early-season vibes that once carried them do not make me optimistic that a single deadline move can change the structural makeup of this roster or build a capable defense around Dončić and James. As the numbers show, the team has a minus-2.3 net rating in nearly 500 minutes with Dončić and James on the floor together this season, along with an alarming defensive rating of 121.5.

They have both put up strong numbers and played well enough individually, but the overlap in their strengths and weaknesses on both ends of the floor is simply too large. At this stage of their careers, neither looks capable or willing to make the kind of significant sacrifice required to meaningfully change that dynamic, nor does there appear to be real belief that such a sacrifice would materially alter the outcome given the current roster construction.

Comments

LakerTom says

January 18, 2026 at 8:10 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Forty games in, nearly half a season under the belt, and it’s time for a 40-game check.

I always try to embed bits of big-picture context and emerging trends into game previews and post-game observations, but these checkpoints are where I step back to track meaningful shifts and evaluate the Lakers’ progress over the course of the season.

If the 10-game check was about perseverance and overcoming early-season injury woes, the 20-game check came at the high point of the season: an 8–2 run, a 15–5 record, and second place in the West — despite advanced numbers suggesting things looked better on the surface than they did under the hood.

Since then, those early warning signs on defense have only been reinforced. A new wave of injuries followed, most notably the calf strain to the team’s second-best scorer and key connector, Austin Reaves, and the Lakers now find themselves in free-fall.

The Lakers are 9–11 since the 20-game check, banged up, and heading into an eight-game road trip. Reinforcements of any kind, whether through health or outside help, feel increasingly necessary.

digginbasketball is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Today’s highlights:

Quick look at the Western Conference race

Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Still elite at a lot of things on offense

Defense so bad that even good offense is often not good enough

Injuries, rotation, and reality check

Luka and his three-point shooting trend

Questions and needs heading into the trade deadline

1-Quick look at the Western Conference race

Chart context: As always, we’ll start with a big-picture conference view before zooming in on the Lakers. A couple of quick observations:

The Thunder remain in a league of their own in point differential, though they no longer look quite as unbeatable as they did earlier in the season. The Rockets rank second in point differential and boast a top-five offense and defense, but late-game execution issues have them sitting only sixth in the standings.

Meanwhile, the Timberwolves, Nuggets, and Spurs are bunched tightly together, both in point differential and in the standings, forming a clear and compact top-five group in the West.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, what we’ve seen all season and what was partially masked by their still league-best 13–1 clutch record is that they don’t belong in that top-five group. Even more telling, despite still sitting a few wins ahead of the Suns and the Warriors, both teams have a significantly better point differential.

As the charts show, all of the Lakers’ direct competitors, meaning all of the aforementioned teams except the Nuggets, who have the league’s best offense, rank inside the NBA’s top ten defenses. The defining story of the Lakers over the last 20 games has been the opposite. Their defense has collapsed from roughly league average into bottom-five territory since our last check.

2-Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Stats context: I won’t go deep here, as we’ll dissect the offense and defense in the sections that follow. What matters at a high level is this: the Lakers are the only team above .500 with a negative point differential. Teams you would consider true contenders all sit at +5.0 or better, while the Lakers profile much closer to the average .500 team they have been over the last 20 games.

Injuries have clearly played a role. Absences for Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, and LeBron James earlier in the season, combined with Luka Dončić missing games in between, have taken a real toll. The Lakers simply have not had a fully healthy group for anything resembling a five or ten game stretch. But since James returned in mid-November, even during relatively healthy stretches or when JJ Redick leaned more heavily on defense-minded lineups, the Lakers’ defense has continued to show signs of structural flaws that will be very hard to overcome with the roster as currently constructed.

3–Still elite at a lot of things on offense

Stats context: At a glance, many aspects of the Lakers offense still look strong. They rank seventh overall and remain a top-three half-court attack. They have been the most efficient team inside the arc all season and continue to lead the league there, even if that efficiency has begun to trend slightly downward in recent weeks.

With Dončić and Reaves, the Lakers have consistently lived at the free-throw line. They still lead the league in free-throw rate, but that reliance is becoming riskier as league-wide foul calls continue to decline.

The problem for the Lakers is that there is not much else beyond that core efficiency. A lack of three-point shooting has been an issue all season, and they rank in the bottom five in three-point accuracy. They also turn the ball over too much and fail to create advantages on the margins, whether by crashing the offensive glass or consistently generating points in transition.

As a result, the offense tops out closer to good than truly elite. To survive with a defense like this, the Lakers would need an offense operating in the top-three range, closer to the model used by the Nuggets, rather than hovering around seventh.

4–Defense so bad that even good offense is often not good enough

Chart context: Why include an offensive trend chart in a section focused on defense? Because the story of the first half of the season was that when the offense clicked, everything else became survivable. Taking care of the ball and scoring efficiently allowed the Lakers to get set on defense and be just good enough on that end to win games. That formula held for a long stretch. Until the recent losses against the Hornets and Kings, the Lakers had won every game in which their offense performed above league average.

But the Lakers have run into two problems lately. First, they have struggled to generate good offense against strong defensive teams like the Rockets, Pistons, Spurs, and the Suns. Second, even against lesser opponents, the defense has degraded to a point where it cannot survive hot stretches. Teams like the Kings and the Hornets did not just get hot. They consistently created clean looks and turned DeMar DeRozan, LaMelo Ball, and Miles Bridges into unstoppable forces.

Since December 1st, the Lakers have been the second-worst defense in the NBA, trailing only the Jazz, a team clearly in a rebuilding phase and not prioritizing defense.

The Lakers currently lack both a defensive identity and identifiable defensive talent. They switch frequently, but do not have the foot speed to contain the ball, nor the awareness, length, or quickness to consistently provide help in the gaps. Once opponents beat the first line of defense, there is little resistance behind it. The Lakers are the worst rim-protecting team in the league, allowing 74 percent shooting on non-transition attempts at the rim, and they also rank bottom five in opponent field goal percentage in the paint.

5–Injuries, rotation, and reality check

Chart context: If we split the season into two 20-game segments, the most notable takeaway from the rotation is availability. Two of the three key players missed significant time, with James sidelined for much of the first stretch and Reaves absent for large portions of the second.

Hachimura was another rotation player who missed a key stretch recently, as did Jaxson Hayes. Beyond reinforcing how important Reaves is as the team’s clear second-most important player, those absences also exposed a roster reality. Hachimura’s shooting and Hayes’ athleticism are two skill sets that simply have no replacement on the current roster. Jarred Vanderbilt saw his minutes increase after falling out of the rotation earlier in the season, but his defensive impact was not nearly significant enough to change the overall makeup of the team. Nor was it enough to offset his shooting limitations, which often reduced the offense to a four-on-five uphill battle.

The other notable rotation development in recent games has been a decrease in trust in Deandre Ayton after his strong start to the season. Ayton had several games where his engagement on the defensive end and on the boards was hard to predict, and his involvement on offense also became a recurring storyline. That shift showed up late in games. JJ Redick notably closed a couple of fourth quarters with Hayes, while also praising his backup center for his effort and play. After his strong play earlier in the year, I mentioned that this season would be a referendum on Ayton. With a larger sample of games, it is becoming clearer that he is not the high-impact, high-effort defensive anchor this team desperately needs. At the same time, Dončić has looked noticeably more comfortable playing with Hayes as his lob-catching partner on the other end.

6–Luka and his three-point shooting trend

Chart context: Dončić opened the season hot with three consecutive 40-point games, but then had up-and-down stretches in December. The biggest problem for him offensively has been going through one of the longest three-point shooting slumps of the last couple of seasons, which became an issue as he was taking step-back threes at a league-leading rate early in the season.

Dončić has decreased his three-point volume, but has also recently regained trust in his outside shot. He is still at just 33.4 percent for the season, but has shot 43.2 percent over his last five games and 40.6 percent over his last seven. The way this team is currently built, Dončić and Reaves, once he returns, will have to shoot above 35 percent from three, preferably in the 38 to 40 percent range, for the Lakers to avoid being among the worst three-point shooting teams in the league and move closer to top-five offensive territory.

7–Questions and needs heading into the trade deadline

Stats context: I won’t go deep into the deadline here. I laid out my high-level expectations in the season-opening column, and I plan to dive deeper into specific archetypes and potential names as we get closer to the deadline.

From Transition to Vision: What 2026 Should Look Like for the Lakers
Iztok Franko
·
Jan 2
From Transition to Vision: What 2026 Should Look Like for the Lakers
I’m not a big New Year’s resolutions or wish list guy. But when my pal Marc Stein asked me to contribute to an initiative he is doing with Royce Webb, bringing together 12 NBA voices on Substack to share what we are looking forward to NBA-wise in 2026, I actually appreciated the challenge. It forced me to zoom out, an…

Read full story
A question I get often is whether the trade deadline can save this Lakers season and turn them into a contender. While I do think the Lakers should make a move, that would represent more of a first step toward building a team around Dončić and making them incrementally more competitive rather than a true fix.

Watching this team closely, the way they defend, the lack of connection, and even the loss of the early-season vibes that once carried them do not make me optimistic that a single deadline move can change the structural makeup of this roster or build a capable defense around Dončić and James. As the numbers show, the team has a minus-2.3 net rating in nearly 500 minutes with Dončić and James on the floor together this season, along with an alarming defensive rating of 121.5.

They have both put up strong numbers and played well enough individually, but the overlap in their strengths and weaknesses on both ends of the floor is simply too large. At this stage of their careers, neither looks capable or willing to make the kind of significant sacrifice required to meaningfully change that dynamic, nor does there appear to be real belief that such a sacrifice would materially alter the outcome given the current roster construction.

Log in to Reply

Reader Interactions

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply