The national conversation surrounding the NBA this season has been centered around high-volume 3-point shooting. It seems NBA offenses are becoming more and more homogenous, with threes at the forefront of every team’s offensive attack. But the Los Angeles Lakers and head coach JJ Redick are not yet reaching that same trend.
The Lakers rank 28th in 3-pointers attempted per game and 27th in makes. They make those threes at a below-league-average rate of 34.8%, putting them in 20th league-wide. The difficulties from beyond the arc are part of why the Lakers offense has crashed to a halt in recent weeks.
In the first month of the season — Oct. 22 to Nov. 22 — the Lakers had the No. 4 ranked offense in basketball. But in the last month — Nov. 23 to end of games Monday — the Lakers are 29th in offensive rating. Part of that has been a concerted effort on defense, but now the Lakers have to try and strike a balance between the two.
Redick gave a detailed answer as to how the Lakers can balance defensive and offensive improvement and what might change on the offensive side of the ball.
“I think for the defense, that’s something that you feel like you always can sort of improve,” Redick said before Monday’s game against the Detroit Pistons. “And there’s adjustments game to game, there’s adjustments in-game, and you’re just trying to figure out for your group how to get stops.
“Obviously we put a big emphasis on the transition defense and then we had a five or six-game stretch starting with San Antonio where, not all of those games but I think in three or four of them, we ‘Red-ed’ one through five. Then we put Max in and we’re trying to find sort of a rotation and a starting lineup that gives us a chance defensively. I feel like we’re trending in that direction.
“The offensive end in some ways I think is no different because it’s the same thing. It’s like, for the group, how do we create and generate good shots? I think it’s not one thing, it’s probably a few things. I would probably point immediately to our shot profile. Over the last 13 games, we’re taking five more non-paint twos. We’re shooting 39% on those. For all the people that hate math, I shared this with the team this morning, and I think it’s really interesting. We’re last or second-to-last in the last 13 in offense. Those five extra non-paint twos, if we shot them at the same rate as Phoenix, who shoots 49% on non-paint twos, our offense would go from 29th to 27th. If we took those five middys and we shot league average on threes, our offense would go from 27th to 12th.
“So in some ways, over the last 13, we’re last in makes, second-to-last in attempts, last in 3-point percentage. In some ways, we need to shoot more threes and we need to make more threes. That doesn’t mean we come down and just no pass, one dribble shot. We gotta take the right ones and we gotta do it with the right process. We’ve shown the guys a bunch of clips over the last week or so of us doing that. Make or miss, we gotta live with the result and we’ve gotta do more of that. We need to launch. We do. That doesn’t mean we’re not trying to get to the rim every single time. But it’s those two things. We wanna live in the paint and we wanna shoots threes. And we haven’t shot enough threes.”
One consistent theme in the way the Lakers have spoken about their season has been working through the process. And Redick likes where they are at in that process and how they continue to improve from here.
“I would say I like where we’re headed offensively with the process and I like where we’re headed with our organization. There certainly was a stretch there where I didn’t like much about our offense. Some of that was AR being out, I think that kind of hurt for that stretch of games. But to me, in terms of the process, we’re trending in the right direction. Results, not so much.
“But I like where we’re headed and I like where the group is at in terms of the belief in the process and the belief in what we’re trying to do and getting back to some of the stuff we were doing early in the season with some four-out stuff and having good results with it, honestly. So I think that stuff is going in the right direction.”
While the Lakers aren’t undergoing a complete philosophy change, it would make sense for them to try and shoot threes at a more consistent clip, both in terms of percentage and attempts. They aren’t explicitly in control of their percentages, so the only thing they can do is scheme themselves into more and better attempts from distance.
JJ Redick upset with turnovers in loss to Pistons
The Lakers had been showing real signs of life defensively and they looked poised to continue when the team returned home to play the Detroit Pistons.
Detroit entered the night with a sub-.500 record but have been feisty on both ends of the floor thanks to Cade Cunningham and the other young talent on their roster. Against the Lakers, the Pistons showed how much of a gap there is between the two teams regarding speed and athleticism.
The Pistons were much more physical than the Lakers were and that led to some sloppy plays from the latter. Los Angeles turned the ball over 20 times compared to just 12 for the Detroit and that ultimately ended up being the difference in the game. The Pistons turned the Lakers’ turnovers into 28 points and that would be too many for the purple and gold to overcome.
After the game, Redick expressed his frustrations with his team’s turnover issue considering they talked about how much Detroit would blitz them before the game.
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