Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Lakers face a must-win Game 2 against a dominant Thunder team after a tough Game 1 loss.
- Their defensive strategy needs a major shift to handle Oklahoma City's depth and offensive efficiency, and it's not about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
- One key adjustment could involve a specific defensive scheme to throw the Thunder off balance and create turnover opportunities.
Entering the series a massive underdog, the Los Angeles Lakers performed admirably in their first game of the series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. For most of the night, they kept the game within single digits before the Thunder ultimately bust the doors open in the fourth quarter.
Down 1-0, Los Angeles must go back to drawing board, as teams down 2-0 win their series only 7.2 percent of the time. No one adjustment can singularly close the gap that currently exists between them and the defending champs, but trying this trick may help them junk the Thunder up enough to steal Game 2.
It's time for the Lakers to go zone
In Game 1, the Lakers used a similar strategy to the one they deployed against Kevin Durant in the last round, doubling the Thunder's reigning MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) nearly every time he touched the ball. They had some success with this approach, as Gilgeous-Alexander turned the ball over seven times in 35 minutes of action.
However, the Thunder still tallied an offensive rating of 114.0, which is nearly three points above the league average for the postseason (111.1). Given how ferocious Oklahoma City's defense is (number one in regular season defensive rating), the Lakers can't expect to outscore a team that is scoring above the league average. So, they need to find ways to slow down this offense even more than they already have.
Funny enough, the Lakers actually did a solid job defending the Thunder when Gilgeous-Alexander was on the floor. According to NBA.com, the team's offensive rating dipped to 110.1 when he was on the floor. It was the minutes where he was on the bench that really killed the Lakers.
It seems that Los Angeles spent so much time game-planning for Gilgeous-Alexander's awesomeness that they didn't think about what they would do on defense when he was off the floor. The Thunder are a deep team, and they can count on the likes of Ajay Mitchell and Jared McCain to buoy their offense without the all-time bucket-getter.
So, I am prescribing that whenever Gilgeous-Alexander is off the floor (and also, at times, when he is out there) the Lakers turn to a 2-3 zone. Redick is the king of gimmick defenses, and he has already shown a willingness to go to this coverage. Marcus Smart, one of the team's unquestioned leaders, even credited it with helping the team become a more connected defensive group.
“When we started first playing zone, it did force everybody to communicate with one another and force guys that other teams probably wouldn’t see as communicators to be able to communicate, which ultimately put them in the right position because now they’re talking,” Smart said after the Lakers' series-clinching win over the Rockets. “Now, they’re keeping their head on a swivel, they’re seeing things. So, I definitely have to agree with [Reaves] on that when we started to play that zone. And obviously we didn’t play that much zone in this series, but it helped us when we did play our man, to understand that everybody out there has to talk, and you don’t want to be the weak link.”
Zones get a bad reputation because they are perceived as lazy and reserved for the lower levels of the sport. However, since NBA teams hardly ever practice going against them, thoughtful versions of this defense can really throw a wrench in offensive flow. The Thunder's ancillary guys already have their hands full navigating possessions without Gilgeous-Alexander, and adding this extra layer for them to problem solve may be enough to truly slow them down.
Of course, Los Angeles also needs to do a much better job of scoring the ball, even though they're still without Luka Dončić. However, a lot of that has to do with their perceived best available player (Austin Reaves) going 3-for-16 from the floor. If the Lakers are going to pull off an all-time upset, Reaves (a 23.3 point-per-game scorer during the regular season) simply has to be better.
Reaves is a great player, though, and the greats can't be kept down for long. So, Redick and his staff just need to trust that Reaves will find his footing soon and work on putting him and his teammates in the best possible position to win. And right now, it feels like that may mean leaning on their patent zone.
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