Coaches creating a scrappy attitude
After a gritty victory over a highly favored Nets team on Saturday night, Frank Vogel couldn’t pick just one player to give props.
The Lakers coach, in fact, listed all 15 of his regular roster players by name — whether they took the court or not — for their contributions. He commended the physical presence of Andre Drummond and Markieff Morris; he credited Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for “defending his butt off” through an early shooting slump; of his ejected point guard who scored 19 points, Vogel said: “I love Dennis Schröder.”
The only people he didn’t name who also had a huge hand in the win: his coaches, and himself. But the Lakers were more than happy to speak up for him.
“The message when he got in the room today, in the morning, (Vogel) said, ‘We’re gonna win this game,’” Schröder said. “I think that’s going to give a lot of confidence to all the players, all the young players, THT, that we will be able to win the game if we’re doing the right things.”
In a 126-101 win over Brooklyn, the right things took a shape that’s becoming more familiar as the Lakers (33-20) accrue more success without LeBron James and Anthony Davis. It was in ball pressure and in full-court sprints. It was in moving the ball side-toside, or in-and-out — wherever the open shot lies. It was in evident efforts like the 20-point, 11-rebound night for Andre Drummond, or more subtle ones like Alfonzo McKinnie grabbing a season-best nine rebounds while taking over a larger role after Wesley Matthews was a late scratch.
The last five games, which have seen the Lakers go 3-2 and nearly flip one of those losses, have been patchwork efforts — not defined by any singular individual performance, but by the will of the group to defend and make just enough shots. The names shifting in and out of the lineups have changed, but what the games have in common can be most readily attributed
to the culture the Lakers have built for a supporting cast playing without stars.
In just his second game as a Laker, Ben McLemore was a sparkplug with 17 points, all of them in the second half. While the 28-year-old guard came into the Lakers with plenty of his own confidence — “It don’t take much to get me get hot,” he said — the communication with Vogel and the other coaches has been an early plus to get him threaded into the team.
“I think that’s the key within winning basketball and great teams,” he said. “It’s just communication, and we do a great job with that, and I’m a listener and coachable, and I want to learn. I want to get better.”
While Vogel has, at times, characterized his role as letting James and Davis make plays, the stretch without the two All-NBA firstteamers has emphasized how much the defensiveminded coach impacts the Lakers’ culture. In the last 12 games since James suffered a high-ankle sprain, the team has maintained a 103.7 defensive rating (No. 2 behind the Utah Jazz in that span) which is actually a better rating the seasonlong average (105.5). True to Vogel’s mantra of extra-pass basketball, the Lakers’ assist percentage in the last 12 games (63.8 percent) is also higher than their seasonlong average (60.2 percent), despite losing their leading play-maker in James.
It was notable this offseason that while several assistants certainly had opportunities to move on, the Lakers’ coaching staff stayed intact with Vogel, Jason Kidd, Phil Handy, Lionel Hollins, Mike Penberthy and Miles Simon. Even though the Lakers are playing games without many of the top players who guided them to a championship last year, that continuity during the spate of injuries has helped maintain the focus on how the Lakers want to play.
Even though several Lakers acknowledged that the team was built to complement James and Davis rather than succeed without them, the fact that they have won games — keeping a grasp on No. 5 in the West — shows how much the coaching
staff has infused them with “next man up mentality,” which is a rarely realized cliche in other teams.
“The next man up mentality that they’ve been preaching to us non-stop all year is just something that we come into every game,” said Talen HortonTucker who had a seasonbest 11 assists. “We try to be prepared for it. So you never know who’s gonna have a night.”
Vogel has been consistent in his expectations all along. When Davis re-aggravated his calf injury on Feb. 14, Vogel said: “We’re gonna win games, that’s the first thing we’re gonna do.” When James was injured on March 20, Vogel was asked about the mood of the locker room: “The mood of the team is we’re disappointed we lost and we’ve gotta get back and win one tomorrow.”
The Lakers are now 1214 since Davis got hurt, and 5-7 since James got hurt. It’s not an ideal record, but it’s better than many expected without their most dynamic weapons.
It has been clear in his Lakers’ tenure that what gives Vogel the most pride — even when he has fielded teams that are heavy favorites — are the underdog stories. He reveled in a win last year in Oklahoma City when both James and Davis were sitting out. When the Lakers won the championship, Vogel said one of his “best moments as a coach” was getting thanks from Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — two holdovers from the previous season who weren’t fan favorites when he stepped in, but who he supported throughout their struggles.
Even though the Lakers are classically front-runners — a star-powered franchise that comes into every game expecting to win — the underdog mentality of the coaching staff has filtered down this season. The anticipation is that it will have postseason payoff once the rest of the group is healthy again.
“To me, the biggest lesson is the value in playing team basketball,” Vogel said. “It doesn’t matter the players in uniform if everyone is competing on the defensive end and sharing the basketball offensively and playing selflessly. You have a chance to win every night.”