Lakers 70-game check: 12 of 13, top 5 offense, Luka MVP form

March 23, 2026 at 8:15 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

The Lakers are peaking at the right time…why and how real is this run?

The last 20 games for the Lakers have been such a roller coaster that we missed the last 10-game check.

It’s been a wild month and a half since my last check at the 50-game mark on February 9th. The vibes have been cautiously optimistic, the Lakers have been winning, and Austin Reaves just returned from his prolonged injury absence. The trade deadline has passed, and we were still trying to shake off some of the disappointment as Rob Pelinka decided not to make any bigger moves, keeping his powder dry for the summer.

So, this one is going to cover two in one—the 60- and 70-game marks, or 71, to be exact. After our last check, the Lakers hit another lull, winning only 2 of their next 7 games. The last three games of that stretch, three consecutive losses to the Celtics, Magic, and Suns, might have been the turning point of the season. After that, the Lakers responded with one of their best runs in recent memory, winning 12 of their last 13 games, with the vibes at their highest point since the trade for Luka Dončić reshaped the trajectory of this team.

In this check, I’ll try to dig into what happened, what changed, and how sustainable this is going forward.

Today’s highlights:

Quick look at the Western Conference race

Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Health, new roles, sacrifices, and comfort zone

Luka’s late MVP push

Offense turnaround: three-point shooting and turnovers

Defense turnaround: how much is just shooting luck?

Transition turnaround

1-Quick look at the Western Conference race

Chart context: With the Western Conference race entering its final stretch, this is where every game starts to swing the standings. Before zooming in on the Lakers, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. A few quick observations stand out.

Looking at the top of the conference, two teams stand out both in the standings and advanced stats (point differential, offense and defense rankings). The Thunder and the Spurs continue with their dominant run, consistently staying in or near the top five on both offense and defense. OKC fell out of the top five on offense, but with the return of Ajay Mitchell and Jaylen Williams, they are trending up again.

The Rockets have been a team in that territory for most of the season. However, since Steven Adams’ injury, the drop-off in their offensive superpower—their historical edge on the offensive glass—has been the main reason their offense is trending down. The Nuggets remain the best offense in the NBA, but also the only contender ranked in the bottom third on defense. The Timberwolves, the last team to round out the top six, declined in form after their ascent in February but remain near the top ten rankings on both ends. We’ll see how they navigate the Anthony Edwards absence—so far, they’ve won three of four games, mostly with a dominant defense.

2-Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Stats context: This is another standard benchmark in this series, focusing on the Lakers’ performance in the key statistical areas and how those numbers have shifted over time.

The glass-half-empty view is that the Lakers still don’t have the profile of a true contender, the theme we’ve been repeating all season. They have outperformed their projections because of their dominance in close games. At 22–6, they have the best clutch record in the NBA, and because of that, they’ve exceeded their projected win total by a league-leading +6.6 wins. Even in the recent winning streak, they won two games on last-second game-winning baskets, bringing their season total to four.

The more optimistic take is that since our last check, the Lakers’ profile has been much closer to the best teams, even with those early disappointing losses baked in. In the last 20 games, the Lakers have gone 14–6, with a +6.0 point differential, and have ranked 5th on offense and 14th on defense.

As you’ll see in the next points, there are some outliers that worked in the Lakers’ favor in the recent run, but also some signs of more sustainable improvement, so the realistic picture of this team is somewhere in between. Still not a true contender, but also not the uncompetitive group without a real shot against good teams.

3-Health, new roles, sacrifices, and comfort zone

Stats context: Before looking under the hood into the nitty-gritty stats, I believe there is a more simple explanation behind the recent Lakers surge. First, the team that was decimated with injuries to their top three players earlier in the season got healthy. Second, with a full group, JJ Redick finally got time and reps to figure out the best lineups, find the right balance, and build some continuity. The latter is often an overlooked trait of real contenders, and the lack of it was a big problem for a team trying to integrate two new starters in Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart, and a third player in Jake LaRavia, who is still second on the team in total minutes.

With a larger sample and a full roster at his disposal, and the deadline addition of Luke Kennard, Redick finally pulled the trigger on replacing Rui Hachimura with Smart in the starting five. The new starters have now played together for almost 400 possessions with an encouraging point differential of +11.3. A lot of the areas in my next points—the incremental improvements in different areas—are in my view a byproduct of lineup clarity, better balance, and building continuity.

Balance and clarity were not only a matter of finding the best lineups and combinations, but also of finding it internally, especially between the superstar trio of Dončić, James, and Reaves. As you can see in his on-ball time and usage rates, it was James who took a significant step back and morphed into an off-ball executor and advantage punisher since he returned from his three-game absence on March 12th. I’ve stressed this in several of my recent game observations that Dončić was the biggest beneficiary of James’ sacrifice, as it meant increased on-ball time and usage for him, a role that he is most comfortable in. Some of this new balance is skewed because of the incredible run Dončić is currently on and will regress a bit, but it was a major, unexpected shift that significantly impacted the team’s outlook.

4-Luka’s late MVP push

Stats context: Looking at indicators of team success, the starting point has to be the best player, especially if he is a super high-usage offensive hub like Dončić. And the Slovenian superstar could be playing the best basketball of his career since our last check in February. Dončić is averaging 35/8/8 splits on Steph Curry-like volume and efficiency from three, adding two steals and almost one block per game, while decreasing his turnover rate. An unbelievable run that propelled Dončić into second place in the Kia MVP Ladder, with growing noise that he could even be a real threat to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the trophy.

The absurd high-volume three-point shot-making is probably not sustainable (although Dončić has been at 40% for almost three months now) but hopefully some other parts of Dončić’s resurgence are. His comfort zone is not only a byproduct of the newly established hierarchy, Dončić has also fully recovered from a couple of early season injuries, and his conditioning down the stretch of games looks the best it has in a long time.

5-Offense turnaround: three-point shooting and turnovers

Chart context: The Lakers have been a top-five offense over the last 20 games since our last check, and there are two main reasons behind it.

The first one is the turnaround in three-point shooting. After being among the worst three-point shooting teams (24th in percentage at 35.0% before February 9th), the Lakers have been 4th in accuracy since, converting on 38.5% of their shots from beyond the arc. Dončić is the driving force behind that turnaround. The other factor is replacing Jarred Vanderbilt’s minutes in the rotation with Kennard, who makes 46% of his three-point attempts. Jake LaRavia’s reduced role—he was fourth in three-point attempts before February 9th—means that some of his attempts are replaced by better shooters like Hachimura, Reaves, and Kennard. Rui Hachimura has remained elite at 41%, while Reaves and Smart have made 35% of theirs during this stretch.

Chart context: If three-point shooting is more volatile, and players and teams go through hot and cold stretches over the course of the season, hopefully the next area of the Lakers’ turnaround is more sustainable. The Lakers have been a high-turnover team over the first three months of the season, ranked 25th in turnover rate from October–December 2025. However, the Lakers have been the third-best team in taking care of the ball post-All-Star break.

This is where I think lineup consistency, greater familiarity and continuity, and the recent shift to a more heliocentric offense with Dončić and Reaves as the two primary ball-handlers has helped, even if it’s not stylistically the most enjoyable form of basketball for some. In my recent deep-dive where I singled out turnover rate as the main difference between the elite Nuggets and the good Lakers offense, I mentioned that Dončić-led heliocentric teams were always among the best in turnover rate, and we’re seeing some of that in the recent Lakers stretch.

6-Defense turnaround: how much is just shooting luck?

Chart context: The Lakers have been the 14th-ranked defense over the last 20 games. An improvement from a mediocre, bottom-third unit to an average one we all hoped this team could become in order to be more competitive against good teams. The biggest reason for that is a huge swing in opponents’ three-point accuracy. In October–December 2025, the Lakers had the second-worst opponent three-point percentage at 38.9%. Since then, in 2026, the Lakers’ opponents’ three-point accuracy is second best, at 33.4%.

The Lakers also allow slightly fewer three-point attempts during this stretch, but the effect is not nearly as significant as the difference in accuracy. I’ve already seen the Lakers X community debate if this makes the Lakers’ improvement on defense a total fluke, so I tried to dig deeper into some other numbers.

Data source: Genius Sports tracking data

Chart context: Looking at the chart that shows the trend of the Lakers’ opponents’ adjusted three-point quality (red line) and shot-making (blue line), it’s clear that worse shot-making, or if you want to call it shooting luck, is the main factor behind the swing.

Data source: Genius Sports tracking data

Chart context: However, if we zoom in on shot quality alone, we can see there is a slight improvement, or a positive trend in opponents’ three-point shot quality declining. I mentioned this in prior points, an example of smaller improvements that add up.

Chart context: The other improvement on defense that is evident mostly during the recent 12–1 stretch is increased activity that reflects in defensive playmaking and opponent turnover rate. During different parts of the season, this team showed they can cover up for some of their talent gap and structural flaws on defense by making enough plays to get enough stops to give their offense a chance to do the rest.

Over the last 13 games, Dončić (2.2 steals per game), Smart (2.2), James (1.6), and Reaves (1.2) have all stepped up with their defensive activity, stringing together key stops and the Lakers rank 8th in opponents’ turnover rate, which unlocks other areas of their game that bring me to my last point.

7-Transition turnaround

Chart context: This is another continuous trend I’ve been highlighting for a while now, and is a great example of how small incremental improvements add up to a significant shift. In one of the prior points, you saw how the Lakers turning the ball over at a high rate was one of the bigger problems earlier in the season, and this chart here shows that as a result, the Lakers were often at a significant fast-break points deficit, especially against better and more aggressive teams.

Since the turn of the new year, the Lakers have been winning the fast-break points battle much more consistently, a result of their improved transition defense and positive trends on the turnover front on both ends. In the first three months of the season, the Lakers have been a bad, bottom-third transition team on both ends. Since January 1st, they’ve been above-average at both.

Making more threes, while opponents miss more, has helped for sure. It allows you to set the defense and attack on leak-outs on the other end. But better ball control and forcing more turnovers enabled the Lakers to flatten the athleticism gap that was so glaring against better teams earlier in the year, where the Lakers would constantly be run off the floor. They are now 19–18 against above .500 teams and have beaten a plethora of good teams recently.

Hopefully some of the positives can carry over for the last critical stretch of the season, and even more importantly into the playoffs, because the recent super fun run has given us hope that was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago.

Comments

LakerTom says

March 23, 2026 at 8:15 am

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

The Lakers are peaking at the right time…why and how real is this run?

The last 20 games for the Lakers have been such a roller coaster that we missed the last 10-game check.

It’s been a wild month and a half since my last check at the 50-game mark on February 9th. The vibes have been cautiously optimistic, the Lakers have been winning, and Austin Reaves just returned from his prolonged injury absence. The trade deadline has passed, and we were still trying to shake off some of the disappointment as Rob Pelinka decided not to make any bigger moves, keeping his powder dry for the summer.

So, this one is going to cover two in one—the 60- and 70-game marks, or 71, to be exact. After our last check, the Lakers hit another lull, winning only 2 of their next 7 games. The last three games of that stretch, three consecutive losses to the Celtics, Magic, and Suns, might have been the turning point of the season. After that, the Lakers responded with one of their best runs in recent memory, winning 12 of their last 13 games, with the vibes at their highest point since the trade for Luka Dončić reshaped the trajectory of this team.

In this check, I’ll try to dig into what happened, what changed, and how sustainable this is going forward.

Today’s highlights:

Quick look at the Western Conference race

Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Health, new roles, sacrifices, and comfort zone

Luka’s late MVP push

Offense turnaround: three-point shooting and turnovers

Defense turnaround: how much is just shooting luck?

Transition turnaround

1-Quick look at the Western Conference race

Chart context: With the Western Conference race entering its final stretch, this is where every game starts to swing the standings. Before zooming in on the Lakers, let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. A few quick observations stand out.

Looking at the top of the conference, two teams stand out both in the standings and advanced stats (point differential, offense and defense rankings). The Thunder and the Spurs continue with their dominant run, consistently staying in or near the top five on both offense and defense. OKC fell out of the top five on offense, but with the return of Ajay Mitchell and Jaylen Williams, they are trending up again.

The Rockets have been a team in that territory for most of the season. However, since Steven Adams’ injury, the drop-off in their offensive superpower—their historical edge on the offensive glass—has been the main reason their offense is trending down. The Nuggets remain the best offense in the NBA, but also the only contender ranked in the bottom third on defense. The Timberwolves, the last team to round out the top six, declined in form after their ascent in February but remain near the top ten rankings on both ends. We’ll see how they navigate the Anthony Edwards absence—so far, they’ve won three of four games, mostly with a dominant defense.

2-Lakers point differential and Four Factors check

Stats context: This is another standard benchmark in this series, focusing on the Lakers’ performance in the key statistical areas and how those numbers have shifted over time.

The glass-half-empty view is that the Lakers still don’t have the profile of a true contender, the theme we’ve been repeating all season. They have outperformed their projections because of their dominance in close games. At 22–6, they have the best clutch record in the NBA, and because of that, they’ve exceeded their projected win total by a league-leading +6.6 wins. Even in the recent winning streak, they won two games on last-second game-winning baskets, bringing their season total to four.

The more optimistic take is that since our last check, the Lakers’ profile has been much closer to the best teams, even with those early disappointing losses baked in. In the last 20 games, the Lakers have gone 14–6, with a +6.0 point differential, and have ranked 5th on offense and 14th on defense.

As you’ll see in the next points, there are some outliers that worked in the Lakers’ favor in the recent run, but also some signs of more sustainable improvement, so the realistic picture of this team is somewhere in between. Still not a true contender, but also not the uncompetitive group without a real shot against good teams.

3-Health, new roles, sacrifices, and comfort zone

Stats context: Before looking under the hood into the nitty-gritty stats, I believe there is a more simple explanation behind the recent Lakers surge. First, the team that was decimated with injuries to their top three players earlier in the season got healthy. Second, with a full group, JJ Redick finally got time and reps to figure out the best lineups, find the right balance, and build some continuity. The latter is often an overlooked trait of real contenders, and the lack of it was a big problem for a team trying to integrate two new starters in Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart, and a third player in Jake LaRavia, who is still second on the team in total minutes.

With a larger sample and a full roster at his disposal, and the deadline addition of Luke Kennard, Redick finally pulled the trigger on replacing Rui Hachimura with Smart in the starting five. The new starters have now played together for almost 400 possessions with an encouraging point differential of +11.3. A lot of the areas in my next points—the incremental improvements in different areas—are in my view a byproduct of lineup clarity, better balance, and building continuity.

Balance and clarity were not only a matter of finding the best lineups and combinations, but also of finding it internally, especially between the superstar trio of Dončić, James, and Reaves. As you can see in his on-ball time and usage rates, it was James who took a significant step back and morphed into an off-ball executor and advantage punisher since he returned from his three-game absence on March 12th. I’ve stressed this in several of my recent game observations that Dončić was the biggest beneficiary of James’ sacrifice, as it meant increased on-ball time and usage for him, a role that he is most comfortable in. Some of this new balance is skewed because of the incredible run Dončić is currently on and will regress a bit, but it was a major, unexpected shift that significantly impacted the team’s outlook.

4-Luka’s late MVP push

Stats context: Looking at indicators of team success, the starting point has to be the best player, especially if he is a super high-usage offensive hub like Dončić. And the Slovenian superstar could be playing the best basketball of his career since our last check in February. Dončić is averaging 35/8/8 splits on Steph Curry-like volume and efficiency from three, adding two steals and almost one block per game, while decreasing his turnover rate. An unbelievable run that propelled Dončić into second place in the Kia MVP Ladder, with growing noise that he could even be a real threat to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the trophy.

The absurd high-volume three-point shot-making is probably not sustainable (although Dončić has been at 40% for almost three months now) but hopefully some other parts of Dončić’s resurgence are. His comfort zone is not only a byproduct of the newly established hierarchy, Dončić has also fully recovered from a couple of early season injuries, and his conditioning down the stretch of games looks the best it has in a long time.

5-Offense turnaround: three-point shooting and turnovers

Chart context: The Lakers have been a top-five offense over the last 20 games since our last check, and there are two main reasons behind it.

The first one is the turnaround in three-point shooting. After being among the worst three-point shooting teams (24th in percentage at 35.0% before February 9th), the Lakers have been 4th in accuracy since, converting on 38.5% of their shots from beyond the arc. Dončić is the driving force behind that turnaround. The other factor is replacing Jarred Vanderbilt’s minutes in the rotation with Kennard, who makes 46% of his three-point attempts. Jake LaRavia’s reduced role—he was fourth in three-point attempts before February 9th—means that some of his attempts are replaced by better shooters like Hachimura, Reaves, and Kennard. Rui Hachimura has remained elite at 41%, while Reaves and Smart have made 35% of theirs during this stretch.

Chart context: If three-point shooting is more volatile, and players and teams go through hot and cold stretches over the course of the season, hopefully the next area of the Lakers’ turnaround is more sustainable. The Lakers have been a high-turnover team over the first three months of the season, ranked 25th in turnover rate from October–December 2025. However, the Lakers have been the third-best team in taking care of the ball post-All-Star break.

This is where I think lineup consistency, greater familiarity and continuity, and the recent shift to a more heliocentric offense with Dončić and Reaves as the two primary ball-handlers has helped, even if it’s not stylistically the most enjoyable form of basketball for some. In my recent deep-dive where I singled out turnover rate as the main difference between the elite Nuggets and the good Lakers offense, I mentioned that Dončić-led heliocentric teams were always among the best in turnover rate, and we’re seeing some of that in the recent Lakers stretch.

6-Defense turnaround: how much is just shooting luck?

Chart context: The Lakers have been the 14th-ranked defense over the last 20 games. An improvement from a mediocre, bottom-third unit to an average one we all hoped this team could become in order to be more competitive against good teams. The biggest reason for that is a huge swing in opponents’ three-point accuracy. In October–December 2025, the Lakers had the second-worst opponent three-point percentage at 38.9%. Since then, in 2026, the Lakers’ opponents’ three-point accuracy is second best, at 33.4%.

The Lakers also allow slightly fewer three-point attempts during this stretch, but the effect is not nearly as significant as the difference in accuracy. I’ve already seen the Lakers X community debate if this makes the Lakers’ improvement on defense a total fluke, so I tried to dig deeper into some other numbers.

Data source: Genius Sports tracking data

Chart context: Looking at the chart that shows the trend of the Lakers’ opponents’ adjusted three-point quality (red line) and shot-making (blue line), it’s clear that worse shot-making, or if you want to call it shooting luck, is the main factor behind the swing.

Data source: Genius Sports tracking data

Chart context: However, if we zoom in on shot quality alone, we can see there is a slight improvement, or a positive trend in opponents’ three-point shot quality declining. I mentioned this in prior points, an example of smaller improvements that add up.

Chart context: The other improvement on defense that is evident mostly during the recent 12–1 stretch is increased activity that reflects in defensive playmaking and opponent turnover rate. During different parts of the season, this team showed they can cover up for some of their talent gap and structural flaws on defense by making enough plays to get enough stops to give their offense a chance to do the rest.

Over the last 13 games, Dončić (2.2 steals per game), Smart (2.2), James (1.6), and Reaves (1.2) have all stepped up with their defensive activity, stringing together key stops and the Lakers rank 8th in opponents’ turnover rate, which unlocks other areas of their game that bring me to my last point.

7-Transition turnaround

Chart context: This is another continuous trend I’ve been highlighting for a while now, and is a great example of how small incremental improvements add up to a significant shift. In one of the prior points, you saw how the Lakers turning the ball over at a high rate was one of the bigger problems earlier in the season, and this chart here shows that as a result, the Lakers were often at a significant fast-break points deficit, especially against better and more aggressive teams.

Since the turn of the new year, the Lakers have been winning the fast-break points battle much more consistently, a result of their improved transition defense and positive trends on the turnover front on both ends. In the first three months of the season, the Lakers have been a bad, bottom-third transition team on both ends. Since January 1st, they’ve been above-average at both.

Making more threes, while opponents miss more, has helped for sure. It allows you to set the defense and attack on leak-outs on the other end. But better ball control and forcing more turnovers enabled the Lakers to flatten the athleticism gap that was so glaring against better teams earlier in the year, where the Lakers would constantly be run off the floor. They are now 19–18 against above .500 teams and have beaten a plethora of good teams recently.

Hopefully some of the positives can carry over for the last critical stretch of the season, and even more importantly into the playoffs, because the recent super fun run has given us hope that was unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago.

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