Los Angeles Lakers are excelling in these 3 areas so far this season

3. Fast break points

Coming into this season, some of us weren’t really sure what kind of pace the Lakers would play at under Vogel.

Would they continue to play fast, as they did under previous head coach Luke Walton, or would they start walking the ball upcourt and milking the shot clock?

Well, the Lakers are eighth in the NBA in fast-break points at 15.6 per game.

After doing a poor job with their transition game in their season opener against the Clippers, the Lakers started to kick it into a higher gear in the second half of their second game against the Jazz.

Since then, they’ve done pretty well with their fast break, as it produced 16 points against the Hornets, 27 versus the Grizzlies, 19 points in Dallas, 15 against the Spurs and 14 against the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday.

If you take out the first game against the Clippers, the Lakers are averaging 17.3 fast-break points in their last six games, which is rock solid, as it’s fifth in the NBA during that span.

When you consider how strong they’ve been defensively (more on that later), the point guard skills of James and Rajon Rondo, and the footspeed of James, Davis, JaVale McGee, Kyle Kuzma, Avery Bradley and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the Lakers have the ability to be one of the better running teams in the league.

Watching clips of coach Vogel during training camp, it looks like he wants this team to be a great running team and to “attack the clock” in order to get the ball downcourt within the first five seconds of each possession.

After ranking towards the bottom of the league in pace after the first couple of games, the Lakers have quickly jumped to 17th in that category.