The Lakers upgraded six offensive areas in their makeover: volume 3-point shooting, better playmaking, more lobs and dunks at the rim, enhanced offensive rebounding, faster transition offense, and more shot creators.https://t.co/ePkkGvhwug
— LakerTom (@LakerTom) September 7, 2021
Six Areas Where Los Angeles Lakers Dramatically Improved Their Offense!
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September 7, 2021 3 Comments
Unlike last season, when the Lakers thought they upgraded their offense with Harrell and Gasol, I think they really did a great job this offseason by upgrading their playmaking, 3-point shooting, vertical gravity, offensive rebounding, transition offense, and shot creation.
There is really no area in which the Lakers did not improve their offense this offseason. In fact, this may be the best Lakers offense since Showtime. They will have to prove it on the court but the potential is there is everybody makes the sacrifices it will require and the stars can stay healthy for the Lakers to win their 18th NBA championship.
I actually think last season’s team, had they stayed healthy, would have had a bigger offensive impact than what we did this season. Had Schorder taken a step forward and not back, had Frank been able to better integrate Trezz, KCP not fallen off a cliff for the majority of the season and so on. As I recall the same super-positive-there’s-no-way-we-can-lose vibe was flying around the blog because we had Wes and Gasol who could space the floor and play D, THT was developing well in summer league, Trezz who was an off the bench scoring machine, and LBJ and AD along with the rest of the remainders from the Bubble title were all poised to play at least as well as they had the season prior. We were younger, more dynamic and better prepared to win.
On paper.
Which is exactly where we are now. So I suppose my answer would be: I think we’re actually fairly equivalent. That I don’t expect to see too much of a PPG jump, hopefully we average around 108-110 ppg, keep the opponent down around 107. Mainly I’d like to see our Pace increase as that will indicate solid defense leading to easy transition buckets. The team last year scored 109.5 ppg and the champ team scored 113.4, contrasted with the defense of last season only giving up 106.8 ppg and the title team 107.6. The difference was our total fall off in transition basketball.
That falls back onto the defensive side of the equation where I think we, at best, treaded water and potentially got worse. So did we improve the paper stats based on the numbers of guys who played on other teams, with different players in different systems? Sure, why not, I suppose so. Will that translate onto the basketball court? I’m not so sure it will because my question with this team is not how well it will score but how well they will be able to defend and get out on the break.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Jamie. Always appreciated and respected.
I remember being high on last year’s team but in retrospect, I think most of the positive thoughts were happening in the aftermath of winning the championship with LeBron and AD playing like the best two players in the world. How would we have done had LeBron and AD remained healthy? Probably not enough to win the championship because I do think the logic behind the moves Rob made were faulty, specifically the trade for Dennis, who turned out to be a disappointment, and the replacement of Dwight and JaVale by Marc and Trezz and eventually Drum. Obviously, in retrospect, those moves did not make us a better team, injuries notwithstanding.
Judging personnel is as much an art as science and what’s most important is learning from your mistakes, which is the main reason I am high on this year’s roster. Could it be a huge bust like last year’s moves? Certainly. Russ might be the bad fit many pundits are predicting and all our shooters could forget how to shoot once they put on the purple and gold. Could we miss the players we let go? Definitely. Just look at who we’re bringing back from former teams.
Anyway, I like this roster because it reflects the Lakers correcting mistakes of last season. We needed more playmaking, which we got with Russ and Rondo. We needed more shooting, which we got with Nunn, Monk, Ellington, Bazemore, Anthony, and Ariza. We needed more rebounding and shot blocking, which we get by moving LeBron and AD to the 4 and 5 and signing Dwight and DeAndre. We needed more shot creators, which we got with Melo and Nunn.
While nothing is a sure thing and the team you create on paper has to deliver on the court but at least this time we addresses all of our issues and righted a lot of mistakes maken last offseason. This time, I’m confident we got it right. I think this is going to be a championship team that will dominate the regular season and sweep through the playoffs to meet the Nets in one of the greatest NBA Finals in the history of the game. Lakers win their 18th.