New Lakers Defense

[eatyourchildren]

If you read forumblueandgold often like I do (by far the best Lakers blogging thinktank out there), you might have caught a whiff of this article:
http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=438

Here's a snippet:

The explanation of what the Lakers have done differently has focused on their borrowing concepts from the Boston Celtics. However, in closely scrutinizing the NBA.com League Pass replay of their game against the Nuggets, I didn't see much similarity to what the Celtics do, which is relatively simple fundamentally. No, the Lakers are throwing out the most extreme defense we've seen in the league in some time. To find an analogy, I have to go back to the Seattle SuperSonics of the 1990s under George Karl, who utilized a version of the SOS Pressure Defense created by long-time assistant Bob Kloppenburg

Discuss!

[hermes]

hide the children!!


anyway its a copy-cat world, and everyone knows that those Sonics teams had the best defense any one has ever seen, don't know why more people don't use it

[TonyMontana]

This is the kind of garbage that I dont like to see.
Everything we do now is the being compared to the Cs.
What a joke.

[Erik Eleven]

I think they should call it "The Black Hole" defense. What they're doing is to disrupt offensive initiation by overloading the ball (strong) side and recover quickly to help the weak two-on-three zone, once the ball is swung to the weak side. Add to that the way Bynum is expanding the defense by flashing on the high pick and roll only to recover quickly, and the way they shut down the weak side base line drive after the opponent swings the ball, and this is looking pretty damn good. It's forcing opponents to take late shot clock threes — I love it.

The weak side recovery is this defense's achilles heal, in my humble opinion. They must recover very quickly or they're giving up open threes to the opponent — see second Clippers game, which is the only second meeting we've had so far — something that better teams will exploit. However, during these first quick five games, it seems as if they have gradually improved their weak side recovery. I guess the idea is to position the two-on-three-weak-side-zone players in a way where they get a good angle to get in the lane and steal the ball when the opponent tries to swing the ball to the open shooter. We saw them doing that time after time, yesterday against the Rockets and it worked like a charm.

I think they should keep luring the opponent into swinging the ball to the weak side (so we can improve our defense's weakness) via the perimeter, where Ariza, Kobe, Farmar, Odom etc are ready to jump into the lane for the steal. Getting the ball into the paint won't be easy at all against this system, so teams will have to try to swing it around quickly to get separation. If they get good at recovering to the weak side, or preventing weak side shifts by breaking passing lanes, this defense will be like a wall. I hope what we saw yesterday in the Rockets game is here to stay. Excellent execution all game (well, at least quarters 2, 3 and 4).

Let's just be patient when the first loss comes. They're still working on it all, and some players aren't even in ready game shape yet (Bynum, Mihm, Walton, Powell (triangle)).

When this system is clicking, it will be like a 24 second black hole — like a big suffocating force that only gets tighter and stronger as each possession gets closer to shot clock violation. Shoot a long three, or give it up for a steal. I love this scheme! Go Lakers.

[tkb]

Thus far we're allowing 88.5 points/100 possessions. Last season, the Celtics allowed 98.9 and (nr 1 in the league).

Oh, and we currently score the most points/100 possessions in the league on offense too.

Pretty incredible start for us. Just have to sustain it now.

[eatyourchildren]

It'll be interesting to see how we fare against guys with GREAT 3 pt shooters--NO for example, who can have Peja spot up on the corner weakside.

Phil has repeatedly expressed his worries about giving up the 3, and I suspect he has House/Peja/Posey in mind when he says that. Hopefully the Lakers length--the common thread of our entire roster sans Vujacic, really--will become a real mitigating factor.

[CITYOFANGELSX3]

Cool.

[milesfides]

It is similar to the Celtics in the sense that the Lakers are using zones to overload the defense against the primary ballhandler.

Of course the defense gives up some open threes, but two things:

1. I'd rather have teams live and die by shooting jump shots.
2. the Lakers are long and relatively quick, and they can still recover and challenge.

One of the teams we played shot like 50% from three, but they lost by 20 points. That's a good trade-off.

No team can consistently shoot well from three to win a playoff series. Including last year's Lakers.

[crazyeights]

^That last part's a good point.

I love the activity on defense. Hopefully we stay healthy (maintaining our depth) as to avoid too much wear and tear before the playoffs.

[DEEP3CL]

This is getting way over blown now by the media and fans, the stuff that the Lakers are doing now some of that stuff is basic principles in defense. Forcing baseline and trapping is taught to middle school players. This stuff is something that as a ball player you never forget, in high school and up you force middle nothing new about these concepts.

Zone over loads will leave you susceptible to wide open shots from the weak side, this is where the rotating part comes into play. All this talk about what the Lakers are taking from the Celtics is ridiculous at best, anybody who knows ball and watch the Finals would be lying if they say the Celtics wasn't playing an illegal defense. Problem was so many Celtic players was in the paint or wasn't guarding their man within the rules, the refs didn't know who to call illegal defensive 3 seconds on.

Fact of the matter is every since they took out the straight up illegal defense when the Lakers started their Three Peat run, cause they were afraid Shaq would just camp out in the middle (which he did) teams started loading up on every teams best score once they changed the rules.

All in all teams can get away with having a "weaker" defender( Vlad or Ray Allen) on the floor because he's going to get help now much quicker. But as long as you keep the ball basically on the strong side and trapping the ball handler, this allows time for the defense to read where the next pass is going to go. The weak side defender should know that the next pass is 2 passes away from the strong side allowing him time to rotate to the weak side shooter. For as long as I played ball this is how it's always been, nothing new about it at all. Defense is taught by coaches using the three R system........Read, React and Recover simple concept.

[Sedale Threatt]

While the principles are generally the same, the way a zone is implemented in the pros is much, much different than you'd do it in high school or college thanks to the longer 3-point line and the inability to park your center in the middle of the paint. Those two factors make the NBA zone a different animal entirely.

To say that NBA teams have been loading up like the Celtics and Lakers are doing since the rules changed isn't true. For the first couple of years, most teams ran traditional zones, and even then only as a change of pace to give their opponents a different look. Certainly nobody based their entire defensive strategy around a zone.

It was only a matter of time before NBA coaches would figure out how to make the necessary adjustments to the pro game. And though the Celtics might not have actually come up with the concept of overloading one side of the court, they certainly perfected it. Is what they do illegal? Doesn't matter -- they get away with it, and it works.

And like Miles said, even though what we're doing might not be identical to how the Celtics do it, it's the same general strategy. I read a piece somewhere else trying to compare it to UNLV's amoeba defense under Tarkanian. I'm not enough of a student of the game to be able to break it down like that. But I do know enough that this zone-oriented system, whatever you want to call it, is a drastic departure from Phil's usual preference for tough, straight-up man to man with as little double-teaming as possible.

That's what good coaching is all about. You learn, digest and adapt, and in the process you devise new ways to improve on old ideas. And if you didn't come up with the idea yourself, you steal it.

[supaflash]

Liek they pointed out in the article our length and quickness lends itself to this style of defense. The bigs can hedge and recover and they can fill gaps with their enormous wingspans. The way it keeps out paint penetration and forces long shots also helps our rebounding. Kobe, Ariza, and even Radman have a lot of athleticism along with the size to create tough doubles and switch when necessary. If the opposing team has a crappy shooter then it makes it even worse as Kobe can then roam. It does remind me a little of the Amoeba zone. Not quite the same but a lot of the principals are similar. They, for a college team of that time, were also big long and quick.

Its exciting to see for sure and I still think we can do quite well man to man when we have the right matchups. This zone though should really help against some of the guys that killed us the worst last year, LeBron and Pierce.

I am anxious to see it in action against NO this week and then against the disciplined physical system of the Jazz down the road. NO probably presents the biggest challenge to this system because they present 3 threats to its weaknesses. 1st obviously they have the elite penetrator and passer. Paul's ability alone could neutralize much of the effort. It still does seem our best choice to slow him down however. 2ndly though they posses great weakside shooting with Peja, Posey, and West. Paul is capable of making the zone commit enough to get them easy shots. Our bigs will have to work hard to hedge when needed and creat bad passing angles. 3rdly they also posses one of the best lobs with Chandler, he is great at the weakside lob and could cause problems.

I think we will win, NO is a good team but they are still not very deep. Even with the addition of Posey the loss of Pargo offset that. Mo Pete is aging and one of the weaker starters in the league and their depth trails off pretty fast after that. Just like in the Houston game I see our second unit continuing to push the pace and keep up the defensive intensity against the Hornets. Should be a great game and I see us vistorious yet again.

[Slava]

Nice posts all around.

The fact that teams would have to beat us from the 3 pt line is a big testament to the success of our defensive strategy and I believe that the biggest test for this defense would be to apply it on the Hornets when they run with CP3/Posey and Peja on the floor at the same time. As we pressure the ball handler in CP3, it remains to be seen how qiuckly he can hit the open man on the wing for a 3 but the fact that we have high activity defenders in Ariza/Kobe/Odom on the wing to recover and counter that makes it more safe for us.

[Dr Aki]

i like the aggressive nature of the defense, its not a traditional read and react defense

its more an arm-twisting defense, where you play to our rules (or at least to try force them to...) by directing dribble penetration into traps and force their role players to beat you from the 3pt line

the problem i have with this is that both new orleans and boston have recognised sharpshooters in peja/posey and rayray

open weakside 3pt shots for accomplished stars such as ray allen all night (if they can get them the ball) will result in losses more often than not (did anyone see anthony carter light us up??)

this season is gonna test how we deal with accomplished slashers more than most because of the consequences

[pdub15]

The Lakers focused on using their length and speed to better their D. They now use expanded pressure and with majority of the game having 2 7ft guys with shot blocking ability teams can't get easy buckets or many second chance oppurtunities. Forcing teams to make contested long jump shops has made teams shot under 40%. When the Lakers were 3peating they did it by making teams shoot low fg% and not giving up second chance points. PJ has just re-used that method but is using the length and speed that this team has to do it.

[eatyourchildren]

The one great side-effect, although that characterization is weak, is that Radmanovic has been playing very good basketball as a starter. The defense is a good one for him. He's able to hound players by virtue of his length and quickness alone even though his man-on instincts are weak, because he has someone hedging him. And the strongside zone/trap/black hole really plays into his abilities as a help trapper or as a weakside stealer.

It's like Kobe said at the end of the playoffs last season--a rising tide lifts all boats.

[tayzer]

This is nothing new. Other teams have been doing this for years. The only team that hasn't been doing this until this year is the Lakers. However the Lakers are just better at it because of their quickness and length.

[what would jack bauer do?]

I love the defense we're playing. Even if our man defense breaks down (like it does for every team in the NBA) we're forcing the primary ballhandler to drive right into the teeth of our defense where Bynum and Gasol are ready to pounce... or better yet either Kobe or Dfish are waiting to take the charge (which we couldn't do if the world depended on it against Boston). But the thing I'm loving is how hard we're recovering to the 3pt shooters, Bynum still isn't 100% and he runs out on the 3 point shooters harder than any big man or guard on our team. This type of effort is what championships are built on. I don't know how the defensive scheme will work against teams with great shooters, but it's something we can build upon and it's definitely better than any of the defensive schemes we had the last 4 years.

[Luxury]

Wow, I learned a lot from a text based standpoint just by reading this thread lol.

[eatyourchildren]

This is nothing new. Other teams have been doing this for years. The only team that hasn't been doing this until this year is the Lakers. However the Lakers are just better at it because of their quickness and length.

It is semi-new. If you bothered the read the link, you'd realize the nuances that make it appreciably different from what other teams have been doing for years (which, btw, they haven't. most teams mix up soft zones every once in a while, not run a zone for 48 minutes)