Los Angeles Lakers Quarter Season Awards
By Daniel Tran
What Are You Doing on Defense? Award – Power Forward Carlos Boozer
If there were a stat that tracks how many times fans say, “what the heck are you doing?” while a specific player is on defense, Carlos Boozer would be leading the category by a wide margin. It seems like every time he gets isolated against an opposing player on offense, you can hear Staples Center collectively sigh and guarantee that the possession is going to either end in a basket or free throws for the other team.
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To be fair to Boozer, he is 33 and those knees do not move as well as they used to in years past. That does not mean he has to stop moving them completely. Boozer is one of the seven Laker players that have 0.0 defensive win-shares and the Lakers give up 9.7 fewer estimated points per 100 possessions when he is off the court.
Boozer, for long stretches, looks lost on the defensive end. He is seemingly caught every game repeatedly failing to get back to his man after a rotation or missing the rotation all together. If he squares up an opponent, he is routinely beat and his first instinct is to push the player and get a foul call against him.
If Boozer cannot play defense after being coached by Mike Krzyzewski, Jerry Sloan, and Tom Thibodeau, there is not much hope that he will improve under Byron Scott.
Give This Kid a Chance Award – Guard, Jordan Clarkson
At this point in the season, what is there to lose giving Jordan Clarkson a fair shot to make the rotation? If head coach Byron Scott is seemingly picking names out of a hat when coming up with lineups anyway, he might as well give the rookie out of Missouri a chance.
Clarkson has only played in 12 games this season. In those games, he is averaging a scarce 10.5 minutes a game. However, he has been productive in those minutes, averaging 4.4 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 0.5 steals per game while shooting 50 percent from three-point range.
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How is that productive, you ask? If you extrapolate those numbers and give Clarkson 36 minutes of playing time, he would be averaging 15.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.7 steals; outpacing current rotation players Ronnie Price, Wesley Johnson, and Jeremy Lin in those categories.
He could be placed in either guard position with Kobe Bryant and Nick Young filling the small forward position and can provided a scoring boost. If the fear is that he cannot handle the ball, he can easily play off Lin or Bryant who need the ball to be effective.
Coach Scott needs to give Clarkson an opportunity to prove himself in real NBA games so that the Lakers organization can gauge his potential.