The possibility of the Los Angeles Lakers drafting another point guard in the upcoming draft brings up a memory of times when interior players were the reason for LA’s success.
It seems a long time ago when the Los Angeles Lakers were being led by Kobe Bryant to a third straight NBA Finals, winning the second consecutive championship in an epic Game 7 against the Boston Celtics. In fact, a while has passed but the struggles of recent years make those times seem far more distant.
In those days the Lakers were cruising through the NBA, pairing 2008 MVP Kobe Bryant with a deadly rotation of three big men; All-Star Pau Gasol, the young and rising Andrew Bynum, and eventual Sixth Man of the Year Lamar Odom.
Every lineup which played major minutes in those years used a combination of two of the three big men (when Bynum was available). Most notably in 2010, the starters, featuring Gasol at the 4 and Bynum at the 5, were the most used lineup by a wide margin.
No other team in the NBA could boast such a thrilling duo of seven-footers able to share the ball the way they did. Especially thanks to Gasol, one of the best passing big men in the league. Besides being the second scoring option on the team and a double-double machine, averaged 3.5 assists per game finding illuminating passes from the low post.
Often labeled as ‘soft’ (yeah, ask Garnett about that dunk in game 2 of the 2008 NBA Finals), he was (and still is) an underrated defender. He has averaged 1.7 blocks per game in his career, with 4.2 defensive win shares during the championship years. Gasol also had a defensive box plus/minus of 3.0 in 2010, per Basketball-Reference.
Bynum was the glad recipient of many of those passes by Gasol, often connecting on the other side of alley-oops thrown from the high post. On the verge of becoming the last dominant center in the NBA (don’t even try to think about Howard!), his knee issues prevented him from reaching his full potential after his first and only All-Star year. He was probably not the most focused guy, as pointed out more than once by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and proved by off-court incidents, but his ceiling was really high and he was promising to become an unstoppable force in the NBA had he stayed healthy.
Anyway, in his early 20’s Bynum was a wonderful complement to Gasol, when able to play since his knees already bothered him. He played a full 82-game season only once in his whole career and his absence in the 2008 NBA playoffs was the main reason for the blowout loss to the Celtics.
To make up for Bynum’s absence there was sixth man Lamar Odom, the only player left from the Shaquille O’Neal trade. After some good seasons as a starter, he found his niche coming off the bench for a contending Lakers team. A versatile power forward with exceptional playmaking skills, he was often used as a ball handler to initiate the triangle offense by Phil Jackson, who favored having players bigger than a point guard to start the offensive play.
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Though they could not rival with the Showtime Lakers, for some stretches we saw the most electrifying basketball in LA when Gasol and Odom shared the floor. With their floor vision, ball movement and extra passing they maximized Tex Winter’s offense.
Defenses had a hard time contending with the best player in the league and such interior power at the same time. In addition to the offensive firepower, the Lakers also brought it defensively.
Their defense was also one of the best in the league, always in the top 6 in defensive rating. In today’s NBA it sounds crazy to think to win a championship playing three players over 6’10” with limited court-spreading ability. As versatile as Odom was, he never attempted more than two three-pointers per game, while 70% of his shots came from between 0 and 3 feet from the basket, per Basketball-Reference.
In an age when the Golden State Warriors dominate the NBA playing with a small lineup with 6’7″ forward Draymond Green at center while their true centers (Pachulia, McGee) play a total of 27 minutes per game, it is unthinkable for other teams to play major minutes with two seven footers on the field. Golden State forced the rest of the league to adapt to their style, leading in a few years to a revolution of the game.
It was seven years ago that the Lakers won their last ring thanks to the low post threat. It was only 2012 when they last played this brand of basketball with Mike Brown implementing the Princeton offense.
Today, they are going to draft for the third consecutive season a guard or a wing with a lottery pick instead of going for a big man as the old adage “you can’t teach size” recommends.
It looks incredible how much has changed in such a short period of time. Now the emphasis is on D’Angelo Russel and Brandon Ingram shooting threes. Power forwards like Julius Randle and Larry Nance Jr. bring the ball up the floor, working hard in the summer to be able to stretch the floor and more often than not play center in small lineups.
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Luke Walton brought this revolution to LA after a failed attempt by Mike D’Anton, (the one who started all this reformation back in the days in Phoenix, four seasons ago. But, this time players, management, and personnel are totally buying into this new style of offense. As long as Rob Pelinka and Magic Johnson bring in the right players, Walton has just to take their hands and lead them in this new era of Lakers basketball.