During the first 42 games of the season, the Lakers played just nine teams with winning records.
Over the course of the next eight games, the Lakers face six teams with winning percentages well above the .500 mark.
They’ll play Oklahoma City, Dallas and Denver on the road, Utah, Sacramento, Boston, Houston and San
Antonio.
Suffice as to say, if the Lakers were at all worried about games being uninteresting heading into the All-Star break, now is the time to stop wondering and start breaking the complacency habit. The Lakers had a nice seven-game win streak before they let their hallway mates end it on Sunday, but letting their guard down aside, the Lakers had been recently exhibiting the type of play that won them two back-to-back O’Brien trophies.
The Lakers have a tough road ahead and will have to play at a higher level than the “B” rating recently pegged on them by Phil Jackson.
“We’re definitely a B-team right now,” Jackson said. “We have room for improvement. What I like about it is we’ve got their attention and they’re starting to be attentive on defense and know that they’ve got an opportunity to be a really good team.”
Indeed the Lakers have given themselves an opportunity to improve by paying more attention to defense, a slightly more efficient Kobe Bryant and Lamar Odom continuing his high-level of play coming off the bench. Like Jackson said, there’s room for improvement. The Lakers aren’t perfect, but they’re not as far as they were from reaching that elusive A-rating. At least, they’re not anywhere near the mess they were after that string of double-digit losses they had to end 2010.
We’ll look at the good and then touch on the bad aspects that have been hurting the Lakers over the past couple of weeks. Bumpy roads are ahead and it’ll be interesting to see if the Lakers come out of it winners.
Next: What the Lakers have been doing well
The Good
Kobe Bryant
Ever since the words “almost bone on bone” came out of Bryant’s mouth in reference to his knee, he’s gone on an efficiency tear and over the last five games has been shooting 48 percent overall. That might not seem like a staggering statistic when you look at Gasol whose career numbers put him slightly over the 50 percent mark, but for Bryant, all things considered it’s a pretty high number.
Bryant also had his first 30-plus point game of the season, granted it was against Golden State and a large part of it might have to do with his 11 points at the stripe, but the outlook is promising. He’s kept his word that he’ll find new ways to score and adjust his game so his knee isn’t affected. Bryant was sidelined from practice on Monday, as has been the case for most of the season, but as we already know, it’s more a strategy to prevent further wear and tear on his knee.
“I’m not going to answer questions about my knee every damn day,” Bryant said. “I said what I had to say, my knee feels fine. The key is to make it stay that way.”
Defense
The Lakers coaching staff has implemented a new defensive strategy that makes the big guys in the middle a focal point and so far, when properly executed, has been working in the Lakers’ favor. Overall, they’re 10th in the league in points allowed (96.1 points) and their effort on defense has also resulted in easy points off turnovers.
Of course, the Lakers will have their rough patches in continuing to execute the defense. When done correctly, the defense prevents the Lakers’ defenders from having to be put in situations in which the other team compromises the Lakers’ defenders through overloads and mismatches.
“It’s all about execution at this point defensively because we’re working on a new system, new structure that we believe will pay off in the end,” Bryant said. “You want to see improvement in that from game to game and not making the same mistakes over and over.”
Lamar Odom
If you thought Odom’s new-found consistency would diminish slightly once sliding back into his role as the Lakers’ sixth man, you’re sorely mistaken. Since Bynum’s return to the starting lineup, Odom is still averaging around 30 minutes per game, shooting at around 56 percent for the season (10 points higher than his career average) and still holds his own in rebounds.
To say that Odom is playing out of his mind right now is not as far-fetched as you would think. It would be a shame if he didn’t make the All-Star team, though I doubt it would affect his psyche.
Next: What the Lakers could improve on
The Bad
Technical fouls
The Lakers combined have committed 19 technical fouls over the course of 14 games. Bryant leads the way with seven technical’s called, next would be Matt Barnes with four, though we can safely assume won’t get another for at least 7-8 weeks and slightly behind, but compiling T’s at a high-rate are Andrew Bynum, Ron Artest and Odom.
With the new league rules on what merits a technical foul, the Lakers must improve on making the necessary adjustments to be able to walk away from bad calls. Accepting calls is just another obstacle they’ll have to overcome before the team becomes affected by it.
After a player is called for a 16th technical, it results in a one game suspension and then a suspension after every other technical foul called. While this hasn’t happened to the Lakers in a while, with the new rules and low levels of tolerance demonstrated by the referees, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Complacency
Tired of reading the statement, “Lakers simply got outworked?” Me too. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough that we as fans get tired of having to hear people harp on the Lakers’ lack of consistently sustaining their focus from start to finish, the players who actually put on their purple and gold uniforms have to get tired of hearing it too. To their credit, the Lakers had been getting better at showing up, preventing themselves from being out-worked by their opponents, but complacency started slowly creeping during their win over the Nets and was the main culprit during Sunday’s loss against the Clippers.
Look, I get it. The Lakers are coming off their third consecutive run at the finals, they’re getting older and maybe they don’t need home court advantage to make it to the finals. Even so, giving up leads for getting a little lazy is unacceptable.
The Lakers have little margin for error this time around, teams are getting to know their strengths and weaknesses and have no reservations when it comes to bringing down the champs. Regression is currently not in the Lakers’ best interest.
Next: Lakers have a couple of hiccups at the point
Derek Fisher/Steve Blake
When it comes to poor shooting, sometimes it’s best to continue to shoot yourself out of a slump. Derek Fisher has been trying to shoot himself out of a shooting slump, over the past six games he’s shot 32 percent from the field and averages five points per game, but it hasn’t been working.
Credit Fisher for doing all the little things, as he usually does, including having active hands in plays creating steals, hustling back down the floor in transition and being vocal. Still, the poor shooting has to be concerning, but it seems we go through this every year around this time.
The injury to Matt Barnes means someone has to pick up the offense. It’s easy to point the finger at Artest, and so far he seems to be delivering on both ends of the floor, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the bench can’t help fatten the stat lines. Steve Blake stands out in the box score for all the wrong reasons, mustering up only six points in his last six games. For the mathematically challenged folks out there, that’s a point a game.
Blake’s problem is a little different than Fisher’s as he’s not even attempting to make shots. He’s taken 11 shots over those same six games and averaging 17.6 minutes of play. Perhaps Blake should take a page out of Jordan Farmar’s book and call his own number every once and a while or at the very least make a conscious effort to spot up and not hesitate to shoot when passed the ball.
In case you’re wondering how Gasol feels about the tough road ahead, he told the Los Angeles Times’ Mark Medina he wasn’t completely sure.
“We will find out as we go through those games how ready we really are,” Gasol said. “We thought we were ready for the Miami game and we got our butt kicked. It’s a matter of stepping on the court and getting the job done.”