The Los Angeles Lakers will dominate the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday.
Wait a second! Donovan Mitchell went off for 33 points! Mike Conley had 24! There’s NO WAY the Los Angeles Lakers can stop OKC’s three-point guards! How is this a good matchup?
True, Chris Paul will go off. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Dennis Schröder will too. No worries! All point guards seemingly average 30 points per game today.
Just compare the today’s top 5 scoring list to 10 years ago.
The game has changed. The Los Angeles Lakers two much-maligned defensive shortcomings — guarding the ball and getting back on defense — are further magnified because the NBA is a guard-oriented, fast-paced game. Unfortunately, the Lakers’ two weakest points on defense just so happens to coincide with the league’s two strongest points on offense.
Even with Avery Bradley, they struggled to stop opposing guards. Without Bradley, they are atrocious. That is not changing.
Regardless, it often does not matter. The Lakers are an anomaly.
The Lakers’ interior defense is well-documented as being elite. In particular, their shot-blocking makes up for their defensive shortcomings on the perimeter. Javale McGee, Dwight Howard, and Anthony Davis literally erase their teammates’ on-ball defensive mistakes.
Their interior offense is just as good, if not better. Most of the points come from their forwards Kyle Kuzma, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis, who combine for 64.7 points per game, good for well over half the team’s points per game (the Lakers average 113.8 points per game).
The scoring percentage figures to increase if and when Kuzma finally becomes the team’s X-Factor, as my Lake Show Life colleague Ronald Agers so eloquently put it.
Past box scores indicate the Thunder have no chance of stopping any of the Kuzma/LeBron/AD trio. Kuzma went off for 37 points in 40 minutes of action in the third game, sans LeBron and AD (the Lakers still won by 15). In the other two games, LeBron was two rebounds shy of averaging a triple-double. AD averaged 33.5 points per game.
I see Kuzma going for 25 points coming off the bench. He can easily get his shot off over OKC’s smallish wings, and burn Danilo Gallinari off the dribble. He will get not get as many open three-pointers as usual (more on why later), but he will torch OKC’s defense in the half-court.
As for LeBron, he needs to be more assertive early! He easily overpowers Terrence Ferguson or whoever else OKC throws at him (except for Steven Adams, guaranteed future WWE Champion if he follows in Enes Kanter’s footsteps).
Interestingly enough, Adams mostly guarded AD in their two meetings. It would be a slobber-knocker! Imagine Oklahoma’s most famous resident, WWE legend Jim Ross, calling the action!
Good ole JR would be disappointed, however. AD will easily shoot over Adams, as he did against Utah center Rudy Gobert. OKC will adjust. Then AD will overpower his next defender, most likely Nerlens Noel, on the block.
More good news for the Lakers: OKC plays defense more like Utah than Toronto, eschewing adventurous help defense to stay home on shooters. OKC is still a top-10 defense because they do not beat themselves defensively.
OKC is first in transition defense (the Lakers are lost) and second in free-throws allowed (that means the Lakers parade to the free-throw line will most likely be postponed). They rank fifth in total made three-pointers allowed (Toronto’s ultra-aggressive ranks 24th).
The numbers trend towards OKC playing a more conservative defense. However, the Lakers will punish OKC’s only defensive weakness, points allowed in the paint. The Lakers average 46.4% of their points in the paint (only Memphis has a higher percentage). Javale McGee and Dwight Howard will throw down quite a few lobs tonight!
But why is Javale McGee still in the lineup? Or why is Dwight Howard even playing? What does McGee or fellow center Dwight Howard do?
Shifting gears a bit, I wanted to briefly discuss why Lakers centers Javale McGee and Dwight Howard still need to start. They can guard paint bound titans, such as Adams or Gobert. In all fairness, Toronto big men Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka’s three-point shooting rendered both McGee and Howard unplayable from the jump.
When this happens, AD slides over to the five for extended stretches. And again, as we all know, he does not like playing the five. He’s better at the four.
Admittedly, Howard and McGee have not scored much, if at all, on offense. But sometimes, player contributions on the basketball court are based on what the other four guys do not have to do.
In this case, because of Howard and McGee, AD does not have to do battle with Adams on defense, which helps AD’s offense immensely, which helps LeBron settle in as the primary facilitator, which frees up Kyle Kuzma and Dion Waiters to provide a scoring lift off the bench.
Conclusion: Do the Los Angeles Lakers win tonight? Does OKC’s offense help or hurt the Los Angeles Lakers’ defense?
Yes, OKC is just a good matchup for the Lakers. OKC has more scoring threats than Utah but does not have a Mitchell-type scorer. OKC is also not going to confuse the Lakers with a whirling dervish of handoffs and screens, as did Utah.
With Chris Paul, the offense begins and ends with him. Paul’s long-winded isolations means the Lakers perimeter defenders will get to stand around more. Utah’s offense never allowed them that luxury. This gives them more energy to play good on-ball defense.
Still, the OKC guards will go off. Gallinari’s shooting prowess will give AD fits defensively. But the Lakers’ offense proves to be too much. The Lakers pull away in the fourth quarter.
Prediction: Lakers win 118-104