3. Dwight Howard
I know that this looks like an incredibly strange inclusion to this list but let me drop a fun fact for you. Dwight Howard is tied for the fourth-best Box Plus/Minus on the Los Angeles Lakers this season with Carmelo Anthony. However, unlike Anthony, he is not getting much playing time. Howard ranks 10th on the team with 594 minutes played.
Howard did not even play in eight of the Lakers’ last 22 games and in the games that he did play he averaged just 13.5 minutes per game. Look, I know that the traditional center is not as valuable in today’s game and some of the BPM numbers can be cloudy with big men.
Dwight Howard needs to play more and quite frankly, the reason he needs to play more is that someone else needs to play less: Russell Westbrook.
The floor spacing is absolutely horrible with Howard, AD and Westbrook on the floor together. In that grouping, you have a guard who cannot shoot and drives to the lane, a traditional center who is just going to get in the way of said guard and a forward who probably should be a center but doesn’t like playing center and is forced to stretch the floor as a result.
The result of that was AD’s terrible jump shot at the beginning of the year and the Lakers have quickly adjusted course and have outright cut DeAndre Jordan out of the rotation and have limited Dwight Howard.
Here is an idea: play Russell Westbrook less and get Howard on the floor more! He should not play huge minutes, but the Lakers could really lean into their size and actually put together a halfway decent defensive unit with Howard on the floor.
A fivesome of Monk, Stanley Johnson, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Dwight Howard can absolutely play stretches of basketball together in key moments depending on the opponent. The Lakers could go back to playing the bully ball that worked so well in the 2020 championship run.
Is this the closing lineup that can fix all problems? Not at all, but it is an option that the Lakers know has worked in the past yet they are not utilizing it at all. The Lakers are 8-4 this season when Howard gets 17 or more minutes of action. They are 11-15 when he plays fewer than 10 minutes.