Avery Bradley
Every championship caliber team needs a reliable defensive point guard, and a player who can slow down the other team’s 1.
The Rockets, Warriors, Bucks, and 76ers were arguably the four best teams in the NBA last season.
Check out the point guards who started for those four team’s defensive metrics during the 2018-2019 season:
- Chris Paul (The Rockets) 1st among all point guards in ESPN’s defensive real plus-minus (2.27), 15th among all qualified guards in defensive rating (104.2)
- Stephen Curry (The Warriors) 16th among all point guards in defensive real plus-minus (0.85), 29th among all qualified guards in defensive rating (105.8)
- Malcolm Brogdon (The Bucks) 30th among all point guards in defensive real plus-minus (-0.5), 7th among all qualified guards in defensive rating (102.7)
- Ben Simmons (The 76ers) 18th among all point guards in defensive real plus-minus (0.53), 91st among all qualified guards in defensive rating (108.9)
In today’s NBA, the point guards who roam the courts are too talented and too multi-dimensional for any team, no matter how much top-end talent they have, to let them waltz into the middle of the court unchecked. Said point guards are capable of picking apart any squad in the association with their passing, their burst to the rim, or their 3-point shooting.
The top 20 point guards in the NBA, can’t be stopped, but teams must decelerate them, and make them feel uncomfortable. Only then can a squad rack up wins.
At the beginning of the offseason, LeBron James said he would play point guard for the Lakers next season. Frank Vogel quickly spoke up and let everyone know that he hadn’t decided who’d start at the 1, which is a polite way of saying that James isn’t going to start games as the Lakers point guard next year.
That’s a good thing because the Lakers don’t want LBJ, a player who’s logged over 50,000 regular season minutes, to grind down his knees any more than he has to, by chasing around speedy point guards.
That means the Lakers are going to have to turn to somebody else to man the 1.
Rajon Rondo’s a definite no-go. He hasn’t tried on defense since Doc Rivers was his coach.
Alex Caruso’s also out. He showed a lot of promise last year on defense, but he racked up his impressive statistics throughout 25 worthless games at the end of another wasted Lakers season. He’s too unproven of a player to start at point guard for a team like the Lakers with championship aspirations.
That leaves Avery Bradley.
Bradley’s career arc has been one of the oddest of the last decade. When he started as a pro in Boston, he was a fierce young defender who took pride in stopping his assignments on a nightly basis. Then, right as he entered his prime at age 26, he was traded away from the friendly confines of “Beantown,” and suddenly he became a journeyman, incapable of replicating the vigorous D he displayed on a nightly basis for the Celtics.
Which Bradley will show up next season for the Lakers?
This is a more important question than most LA fans realize because if “Boston Bradley” never arrives it’s going to leave a gaping hole in the Lakers defense, a crater so big it’s going to put the Purple and Gold at a notable disadvantage on the less glamorous side of the ball every night.
The Lakers aren’t going to need a lot of offense from Avery Bradley next year, 8 points per game on 38% shooting from deep will be enough, but Bradley must play good defense for LA to have any shot of winning a championship.