The Lakers are getting lucky, but there are signs of defensive improvement
By Jeff Siegel
The Los Angeles Lakers, after four straight years in the basement of the league, suddenly have the fourth-best defensive rating in the league. Their personnel hasn’t changed much, though the upgrade from D’Angelo Russell to Lonzo Ball has been a positive for them on that end. So what’s going on that has them playing like a top-tier playoff team on defense?
In short, the Lakers are benefiting from some extremely cold shooters on opposing teams. 3-point defense is one of the few things over which teams have very little control, and the Lakers are the best in the league in that metric. In particular, they’re seeing a lot of their opponents’ open shots rim out from beyond the arc. The Lakers have given up the eighth-most wide-open 3s in the league, yet opposing offenses are shooting the second-worst percentage on those shots.
Digging further into data from Synergy, it’s clear the Lakers are the beneficiaries of some unsustainably good luck. Just like their wide-open 3-point “defense,” their unguarded catch-and-shoot “defense” has been fantastic. They rank third in the league in this metric, having given up 1.00 points per possession on these unguarded catch-and-shoot jumpers so far this season. Their rating in this area is massively under the 1.14 points per possession league average on open catch-and-shoot jumpers and once again points to the luck factor in their highly-ranked defense.
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Of course, while teams can’t control whether an open shot goes in or not, they have some semblance of control over who shoots that open shot. Perhaps the Lakers are executing the scouting report and leaving poor shooters open and closing out hard on better shooters. This shows up in the data, to an extent, but doesn’t explain a majority of the variance between their mark and the average. Previous research has also shown that this effect — good defenses leaving bad shooters open — is mostly imagined.
The Lakers have given up 164 open catch-and-shoot jumpers this year to 84 different shooters, who have scored 164 points on those shots. Those same 84 shooters, when they’re not playing the Lakers, are scoring 1.12 points per possession on the same open shots. While 1.12 points per possession on open catch-and-shoot jumpers is still slightly below the league-wide average, which points to the defense executing the game plan and allowing lesser shooters these open shots, those shooters are just barely below average and are shooting a full 0.12 points per possession below their normal average when they face the Lakers.
There certainly are things the Lakers are doing well to aid their defensive catch-and-shoot numbers. It’s readily apparent they’re well-coached on that end to funnel the ball toward bad shooters and give them enough of an opening to take a low-percentage shot, at least in certain possessions even if it isn’t common enough to explain all the numbers. Watch below how Brandon Ingram helps down into the paint but doesn’t follow John Henson too far:
As Giannis Antetokounmpo gets into the post against Ball, Brook Lopez moves over to double him. Ingram, as a result, has to crash down from the weakside corner to cut off the pass to Henson under the basket, but as soon as Henson floats out toward the free throw line, Ingram lets him go, shortening his potential recovery to Tony Snell, who is a much better shooter. Henson gets one of those open catch-and-shoot jumpers, but the Lakers will take that shot over a corner 3 from Snell.
This time, Ingram leaves his assignment much earlier to get across the paint to help on the Tobias Harris drive:
In the above clip, Ingram’s tasked with guarding Stanley Johnson, a career 29.9 percent 3-point shooter. As soon as Harris catches the ball in the mid-post against Ball, Ingram is over in a flash. Harris finds Johnson for a lightly-contested corner 3, but once again, the young Lakers make the right choice in whom they decide to leave open.
They’ve had some good fortune on opponents’ shooting from beyond the arc, but it doesn’t mean the Lakers’ defense is just as bad as it’s been over the past four years. While they’re giving up the most shots at the rim in the league, they’re doing a great job deterring shooters around the basket. Their ninth ranked at-rim field goal percentage against would be their highest mark since 2010-11, when they employed Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum at the center position. They’re about average in defensive rebounding, a metric that picked up last year with the arrival of Luke Walton but hadn’t been that high since the same 2010-11 season. They’ve also improved across the board at not fouling as much as in previous years.
Their transition defense is still rather poor, but it’s not as atrocious as it’s been. The Lakers ranked in the bottom four of the previous five years in opponent transition frequency. (They were all the way up to 29th in the other year). They’re 24th this year, which isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s an improvement over previous seasons. They’ve been particularly adept at getting back after a missed shot and have done a good job across the board at actually defending when they do get back, which is also something they’ve struggled with for a half-decade.
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While an improvement from 29th to fourth might be too large a jump to sustain all season for the Lakers, they’re showing slow but sure improvement on that end, both in individual and team defense. Regression is almost certainly coming from their opponents on their open shots and on their 3-point attempts, but the Lakers continue to defend at a higher level than they’ve done since they were championship contenders in the early part of this decade.