Lakers’ offensive play gives them optimism going forward
Outside of the All-Star break, it’s rare for NBA teams to have three consecutive days off between games.
So when this break hit, they knew exactly how they wanted to use the time before the schedule picks back up again, starting with tonight’s home game against the Philadelphia 76ers.
“We’ll get a chance to tighten up some things offensively, tighten up some things defensively,” coach Darvin Ham said. “There’s a couple of new wrinkles we want to do on both sides of the ball and we’ll get a chance to look at.”
While those wrinkles likely won’t be shown until they’re back on the court for a game, their play, especially offensively, before the short hiatus provided optimism for the future.
The Lakers’ offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) of 123.4 over their last five games was the league’s secondbest mark.
They’ve had the league’s secondbest offensive rating over the last two months (119.9 since Jan. 17), but the recent uptick has coincided with running
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more sets and organized offense.
“It’s very much deliberate,” Ham said after Thursday’s practice. “(Assistant) coach [Phil] Handy does a great job. Just as (assistant) coach (Chris) Jent does a great job with our defense, coach Handy does a great job with our offense. Making sure we’re organized and along with myself and D’Angelo Russell, (LeBron James), everybody, (Anthony Davis) and (Austin Reaves), Spencer (Dinwiddie), just making sure we get a play call in and things may break down.
“A lot of times, coming off a live-ball miss, I’m yelling at them to play basketball so we won’t slow down and try to get guys arranged in certain places and then now that messes up the rhythm. We’ve just been doing a better job of being concise with what we want and what we’re trying to get.”
The Lakers have had a half-court offensive organization rate of around 55% over their last five games, according to data compiled by Cranjis McBasketball, a founder of BBall Index, which is a basketball data and analytics website. This includes 60% on Monday’s 136-105 blowout victory over the Atlanta Hawks.
According to the data, the Lakers are 22-10 in games when they’ve had a halfcourt offensive organization rate of at least 51%+ and 13-2 in games at 55%+.
“It helps us tremendously,” Russell said. “I feel like with us, we have spells where our stagnant offense is leading to bad starts, bad finishes, it just leads to stuff we don’t really enjoy. Or we’re having to work against the whole game.
“Getting off to good starts, when the offense gets stagnant, we can run a few sets to get the ball popping again. It’s vital for us. We’ve got a lot of guys, a lot of talent, can easily get in ‘Hero Mode’ and it can hurt us as a team. So just keeping that ball popping. Having everybody trust the pass. It’ll be contagious, making us hard to guard.”