Los Angeles Lakers are fully embracing small ball

The Los Angeles Lakers may have only played one preseason game thus far, but it is already clear the direction they are heading as a team.

It’s official, the Los Angeles Lakers and NBA basketball are finally back. Sunday’s preseason game gave us our first glimpse of what the new-look Los Angeles Lakers are going to look like with LeBron James.

We knew going into the game that things were going to be quite different for the purple and gold, as you would expect to be the case after adding a player of James’ caliber.

But there were plenty of things we were still uncertain about, some of which become more clear after the team’s first 48 minutes of play. Of these several things, one stood out above the others as the clear-cut main takeaway from the exhibition.

The Lakers are going to play small. A lot. Whether this is by choice, due to the wing-heavy trend of the modern NBA, or by lack of a better option, due to the lack of talent at the team’s center position, small ball is clearly the route this team is choosing to embark upon this season.

But we knew this would be the case before the preseason began. While many could assume small ball was the future for this team by the look of their roster, it was also confirmed for us.

“We want to be a positionless team, and there’s going to be times where we’re all playing different positions,” said James via Silver Screen and Roll.

After this comment, among several others describing the team’s plan to become a positionless, small ball team, it was no surprise to see the team spend some time without a true center on the court in Sunday’s loss to the Nuggets. What was surprising is the extent to which they did it.

While it is just the first preseason game and far from conclusive, it appears the Lakers plan to play more small ball than any other team in the league. The team went to their first small lineup with five and a half minutes left in the first quarter.

This lineup features Kyle Kuzma playing the nominal center position with Rajon Rondo, Josh Hart, Lance Stephenson, and LeBron James joining him on the floor. The team spent a large portion of the game with lineups like this that features Kuzma or Michael Beasley at center.

This high dosage of small ball may be attributed to the fact that it is preseason and the team is spending more time than they would usually allot to these types of lineups so they can get a feel of it will work or not.

But if this is not the case and small ball is here to stay in abundance for the Lakers, then there were many encouraging signs that it will be effective, as well as many signs that they still have a lot to improve with these lineups, in last night’s game.

Let’s take a look at what worked.

In this play the Denver Nuggets attempted to hide center Nikola Jokic on Lance Stephenson, being that Stephenson was the team’s least skilled offensive player on the floor at that moment. When the team has five players who can all handle the ball on the court at once, such as they did in this instance, even the weakest link becomes a difficult cover for a plodding big like Jokic.

Stephenson was able to isolate Jokic on the wing and secure the easy mid-range shot. Being able to force bigs off the floor with plays like this will be a huge plus for the team as it will serve to relieve some of the issues that come with playing small–such as rebounding and defending elite bigs in the post.

This inability to play true bigs was a very relevant part of the Western Conference playoffs last season, as the top teams in the conference used small lineups of their own to negate the elite paint protectors they came across. This will be essential for the Lakers.

Isolation plays aren’t the only way the team took advantage of bigs.

One of the main benefits of many small lineups is the ability to play a five out offense with maximum spacing. This play showed the team with a lineup that included five players who can all knock down an open jump shot.

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This, of course, forces the defense to respect that and puts them in a dilemma when an offensive player beats their man and penetrates, such as Ingram did. Nuggets center Mason Plumlee elects to help off of Michael Beasley and prevent Ingram from attacking the basket with a full head of steam.

This would prove to be the correct decision for Plumlee if the Lakers were using one of their traditional lineups that include JaVale McGee or Ivica Zubac at the five. But alas, they were not in one of those lineups and were able to capitalize off of Plumlee’s decision and walk away with an easy three points.

This is something we will be seeing occur quite often, especially when LeBron James is the ball handler. Drive and kick plays such as this have been a strength of James for years and will be for years to come on the Lakers.

The team did not play as well as you’d want to see on defense during this game, but there were flashes of greatness shown on that end. Plays like the one above show the potential the team has on that end of the floor.

The level of defensive activity on this play shows how the team can continuously close out on the open shooters and make the necessary switches to suffocate an offense and lead to easy points on the break.

This will happen more and more as the year goes on and players begin to develop defensive chemistry with one another– not to mention the fact that there will be much more effort than displayed in a preseason game.

The team’s entire identity will reside in plays like these. James has said that he sees this Lakers team playing in a similar fashion to his Miami Heat teams in that they will put in the necessary effort on defense to create easy points for themselves.

Plays like this make it clear as to why he feels that way. The frequency to which these occur will be one of the factors that decide if this team reaches their full potential.

The Lakers’ small-ball lineups were not perfect in preseason game one. In fact, they were very far from it. The team clearly needs to work on becoming better at rebounding in the frontcourt and fine-tune their defensive chemistry so they do not allow as many easy baskets as they did today.

While these issues are present, the positives that were shown in such a brief amount of time show more than enough potential to outweigh the negatives. They have a long way to go, but this Los Angeles Lakers team will soon be one of the most effective small-ball teams in the NBA.