Lakers Must Prioritize Defense to Make Playoff Dream a Reality
By Eric Yee
The hype train on the Los Angeles Lakers has begun to rev up, but if the team is serious about making the Playoffs this season, they need to turn it around on the defensive end of the floor
If it wasn’t already apparent enough, Monday’s contest against the Utah Jazz was a prime example of the Lakers’ defensive struggles through the first quarter of this season.
Getting down by as many as 19 points in the middle stages of the game, Los Angeles must improve their defense if they plan on turning their Playoff pipe dreams into a reality.
Currently ranked 28th in terms of defensive efficiency per ESPN, the Lakers have won the majority of their games by holding off runs with offensive surges of their own rather than playing defense and getting stops. This is to say, they’re not really forcing teams to miss shots, something D’Angelo Russell talked about earlier in the season.
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This was shown on a multitude of occasions against the Jazz where both teams went back and forth, trading buckets for what seemed like an eternity in the second quarter. However, once the Purple and Gold went cold, the Jazz were still able to continue their onslaught and there was nothing LA could do to stop them.
As in recent years, the injury bug has once again demoralized the team’s starting and now bench unit, but considering their defensive struggles through the first 20 or so games, that’s not a good enough excuse for how awful they’ve been this season.
LA may be a much improved team on the offensive side of the ball, but Coach Luke Walton needs to get his guys into form on defense if he’s to complete his already stellar start to the Lakers’ ongoing rebuild.
The difference between Playoff teams and the bottom of the pack may seem huge, but bridging the gap is made much easier by prioritizing the things that matter, in this case, finding a way to put the personnel he has in a position to succeed on the defensive end.
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That said, accountability must also be placed on the players to put in the effort on a nightly basis, but judging by their hustle and how obvious it is that they’ve fully bought into Walton’s system, that doesn’t seem to be the main issue at this point in time.