How Lakers held off Celtics with ‘one of the best defensive plays of year’

The new bench unit — and rotation hierarchy

Vogel has been asked about the rotation multiple times on the road trip, as it’s become increasingly clear that the 11-man rotation — 10 on some nights — just wasn’t working.

With the Lakers in need of a win to avoid a discouraging three-game losing streak, Vogel decided to deploy a playoff-like rotation against the Celtics, using just nine players for the first time when fully healthy this season.

Wesley Matthews and Markieff Morris, rotation mainstays who have struggled to find their footing at times, received DNP-CDs, and the Lakers ran with Harrell, Kyle Kuzma, Caruso and Talen Horton-Tucker. And it worked.

The new bench unit of Harrell, James, Kuzma, Horton-Tucker and Caruso was plus-13 in 10 minutes. Heading into the game, they played just 10 minutes together.

“I liked the energy that they had,” Vogel said. “Alex and Kuz and Talen and really Trezz — all four of those guys are really hard-playing dudes.”

Added James: “It’s a high-energy group. We all play with a pace, a level of energy we just find off one another. It’s a team where we have multiple ballhandlers, multiple guys that can slash and (shoot). It works well for us, and just Trezz mans the paint.”

The lineup is a little light on shooting — Harrell doesn’t provide spacing, Horton-Tucker is a below-average marksman and Caruso, while among the league leaders percentage-wise, is a low-volume shooter — but it makes up for it with energy (Caruso, Harrell, Horton-Tucker), defense, ballhandling and playmaking, and, oh yeah, LeBron James.

Those are the Lakers’ four best bench players this season. Each is a positive on the offensive end of the floor, if not both, and that hasn’t been the case for Matthews and Morris, two veterans who still have value but are on the downside of their careers.

Despite the group’s success in a high-pressure situation, Vogel was adamant that this was a temporary measure. Matthews and Morris aren’t permanently benched. The infamous Lineup of Meh likely isn’t retired. Vogel is going to continue to experiment. It’s too early in the season to cut the rotation to nine players.

But we now have an idea of who Vogel trusts and will rely on most when the Lakers need a win.

“It’s the toughest part of the job, to be honest,” Vogel said of benching players. “You’ve got guys that are really good players that deserve minutes that you don’t have minutes for. It’s difficult. They’re tough conversations. But those two guys are consummate pros and this is not something permanent. This is, you know, we lost two in a row, let’s get a win tonight and go game-to-game from there. We’ll continue to evaluate what we got to do with our rotations to get Ws.”