Los Angeles Lakers: 3 reasons to feel optimistic about the future
Alex Caruso’s emergence as a viable back-up point guard
The stars aligned perfectly for Alex Caruso at the end of the 2018-2019 regular season. On Jan. 19, Lonzo Ball suffered a sprained ankle in the Lakers loss to the Rockets.
Ball was expected to miss 4-6 weeks, which would have put him back on the floor towards the beginning of March. However, he ended up having a bone bruise in his left ankle which kept him out the rest of the season.
Brandon Ingram was sidelined after his second game in March due to a blood clot in his shoulder. This type of injury is so rare that over the last twenty NBA season less than ten players have suffered from it.
Then you have Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who weren’t injured but also suffered from a malady so rare most NBA fans have never seen it.
For unknown reasons, after the new year, whenever the Lakers were on defense, the millions of synapses that started in Rondo and KCP’s brains and flowed out to their muscles stopped working rendering both players unable to play D.
February
- Rajon Rondo: 118.5 defensive rating (377th out of 434 players)
- KCP: 113.1 defensive rating (321st out of 434 players)
March
- Rajon Rondo: 114.3 defensive rating (367th out of 447 players)
- KCP: 109.5 defensive rating (267th out of 447 players)
The random events listed above paved the way for Alex Caruso to save his basketball life. (Don’t be mistaken, if Lonzo and Ingram hadn’t each suffered a random injury and if Luke Walton hadn’t been forced to find someone to replace the corpses of Rondo and KCP, Caruso would have been out of the league next season.)
Alex Caruso played a grand total of 1.7 minutes during the entire month of February. Then in March he played in 14 games and averaged 23 minutes per game.
Caruso took advantage of his opportunity by playing incredible defense. He finished the year with the 19th best defensive rating in the NBA and he held opposing guards to nearly eight percentage points below their average field goal percentage, good for first among all guards in the league.
During March and April when Caruso amassed his epic advanced stats, he was in a basketball life and death situation, so his adrenal glands were definitely pumping a little more fluid than the other players on the court. He’s not really one of the best overall defenders in the NBA, but he certainly proved that he can get it done for the Lakers on the less glamorous side of the ball.
Alex Caruso moves better laterally than most of the guards in the NBA, which allows him to stop one-on-one penetration. He also fights through screens with 100% effort, constantly bothering his assignment’s shot from the side or from behind. He uses his 6”5’ height to help him close out on shooters from beyond the arc as well.
He’s doesn’t have the strength or athleticism to surpass the top defensive guards in the league like Marcus Smart, Patrick Beverly, Derrick White, Chris Paul, and his teammate Lonzo Ball, but he could end up being a top-15 defender at his position.
On offense, Caruso averaged 10 PPG during March and he shot just under 50% from deep. He showed that he’s a better than average 3-point shooter who has surprising bounce going to the rim. He’s more than capable of providing a scoring spark off the bench for the Lakers next season and beyond.
Due to a plethora of bad luck and random injuries the Lakers were able to unearth Alex Caruso, a player who could end up becoming one of the best backup point guards in the NBA. That’s incredibly fortunate for the Purple and Gold because heading into the summer Los Angeles is in dire need of a PG to back up Lonzo Ball.
The Lakers will have an opportunity to sign Alex Caruso to a multiyear-minimum contract, which will give LA more money to spend on other needs.
Lakers fans should feel incredibly optimistic about Alex Caruso because Rob Pelinka’s a sharp GM who knows when to re-sign good players. Oh wait, that’s not true, he let Brook Lopez and Julius Randle walk last summer and they both had breakout years for their new squads.
Nobody’s perfect. Pelinka almost certainly learned from his mistakes the last offseason. It would be a shock if the Lakers didn’t resign Alex Caruso as a guard off the bench next year. Lakers fans, you can rejoice over Alex “110% Effort” Caruso, because he should don the purple and gold for the foreseeable future.