The Lakers are in trouble. Kind of.
The Hornets are a team the Lakers beat handedly during the regular season by sweeping their four-game set and three of those games included David West, New Orleans’ second-best scorer. Without West, Chris Paul and the Hornets would have to get crafty in order to even keep up with the Lakers. The problem is, while the Lakers aren’t helping matters much on the defensive end by at least some-what containing Paul and owning the glass, they’re also not sticking to what works for them on offense.
In this case, don’t be so quick to blame Kobe Bryant for the Lakers’ ineptness to put up points with ease, he’s tried adjusting his game to see what works best against Paul and the Hornets.
In game one we saw Kobe the aggressor, scoring 34 points along with five assists. Paul however, countered with his own a 33-point, 14-assist game of his own. The Lakers second-leading scorer wasn’t even the second, third or fourth best player on the floor, contributing to eight points and six rebounds. The Hornets ousted to Lakers 109-100.
Reacting to Paul’s brilliance not only scoring, but also in conducting the Hornets’ offense like Gustavo Dudamel would the LA Philharmonic, Bryant decided he would go All-Team Defense on Paul in game two. While it limited what he could do offensively, Paul only had 20 points and 9 assists. Bryant had 11 points in 12 shot attempts. It was ugly, but the Lakers got the 87-78 victory over the Hornets.
After Phil Jackson chimed in on Bryant’s offense, or lack thereof in game two, Bryant again came out looking aggressive, scoring 30 points. The Lakers as a team did well defensively in limiting Paul to 22 points, eight assists and did an even better job locking-down the defensive glass allowing only four offensive boards to the Hornets. It’s highly doubtful the Lakers’ effort in securing rebounds, limiting the Hornets’ second-chance points and Paul’s series-low eight assists aren’t at all correlated. Less ball-handling for Paul equals less shot attempts for the Hornets. The Lakers defeated the Hornets 100-86.
Next: The Hornets out-rebound the Lakers, end up evening up the series
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Game 4 was entirely different altogether, Bryant going for a hybrid of first-half facilitator and second-half prolific scorer. Except in this case, the Lakers gave up 20 second-chance points to the Hornets, allowed Paul to get his second career triple-double (27 points, 15 assists and 13 rebounds) and never took advantage of their size by sticking to the offensive scheme that worked so well during the opening minutes of the game. Even more alarming, over the course of the first three games, the Lakers were +21 in total rebounds, but in the Hornets five-point win over the Lakers, Paul had as many rebounds as Gasol and Andrew Bynum combined.
Cue Jackson for the understatement of the playoffs so far.
“We punked out there on the court tonight,” Jackson said.
If people forgot how great Paul is, it’s safe to say their memory has been shaken-up over the course of the series and game four is sure to leave a lasting impression on his overall legacy regardless of what team ends up winning the next two-out-of-three games.
“You’re going against one of the best point guards in this game, and when it’s all said and done, he’ll be one of the best that’s ever laced ’em up,” Bryant said. “That’s just a bad, little dude, man.”
“We can have one or the other,” added Bynum. “We can have him score points or we can have him getting people involved. We can’t have both. He had 27 and 15 assists. That’s nearly 60-some points; we can’t allow that.”
Next: Lakers need to find their flow on offense—stat
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The Lakers aren’t going to shut-down Paul, they don’t have the personnel for that, but if the Lakers are to successfully move on to the next round they’ll have to go with their bread and butter on offense against a smaller Hornets team.
Basically the Lakers have to feed the big guys in the paint, not take an alarming amount of perimeter shots, allow Ron Artest (the most consistent Laker in the series thus far) to do work in the post and move the ball to get better looking shots.
It also helps if Gasol were consistent on both ends of the floor. If he wasn’t doing much to secure his second-best player on the team status, he’ll have to make a case for it now more than ever with the possibility of Bryant being out in game five due to a foot injury he sustained Sunday night. Assuming Bryant does end up playing, as is likely the case, it won’t be easy for him to put up the same numbers he’s been averaging during the playoffs—Gasol, Bynum and Sixth Man of the Year Lamar Odom will have to step up their game in a big way.
That means helping contain Paul as a team defensively and doing what works for them on offense. For the Lakers to pull through in this series and (hopefully) in the next few rounds, they’ll have to be more consistent executing their offense. Something they’ve failed to do in all but one game against the Hornets.
In that aspect, perhaps a consistent offense is the one adjustment that’s currently hurting the Lakers more than Paul’s sick crossover move at the moment.