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eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co slash b ball. All right, wellcome to him tonight here at the volume heavy Tuesday. Everybody ovove you guys are having a great week so far. Just got a quick show for you today. We're just gonna do a deep dive into the Los Angeles Lakers, who, after their ten and four start, are just two and five in their last seven games as they're tumbling down
the Western Conference standings. Lebron James is playing the worst stretch of basketball that he's played in over two decades. We're gonna be a deep dive into all of the issues that are going wrong for the Lakers and some specific things to keep an eye on moving forward this season. How much of this is circumstantial and how much of this is the reality of their roster. You guys know the joke before we get started to subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you miss it. So you
don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLT so you guys don't miss you announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts on our Hoops Tonight. Don't forget we have new social media feeds on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for the Hoops Tonight channel where we're releasing more content, So make sure you guys follow there, and then keep dropping mail
bag questions in the YouTube comments. We're gonna keep recording a mail bag in the Friday Show later this week. All right, let's talk some basketball. So before we get into the Lakers, two things. First of all, if you're expecting me to come on here and talk about how I was wrong about the Lakers, that's not going to happen. All I said before the year is that I thought they were a good team, but that they were not a top tier championship contender that they needed a trade
if they wanted to contend for a championship. But I said that I thought they'd win fifty games or so, assuming relative good health for Lebron and av So, if you're expecting me to come on here because they're one fourth of the way through the season and they have a forty seven win pace instead of a fifty win pace and just admit that I was wrong, I'm just not going to do that. I'll freely admit when I'm
wrong about the Lakers. I'm just not there yet. I would even agree with some of the Lakers detractors out there who say that they're not as good as their record. I agree they're not as good as their record. But I still feel more or less the same way about this team as I did before the season. We'll talk more about why here in a bit. Secondly, if you're expecting me to come on here and say Lebron is finally.
Washed, just not going to.
Yeah, he's playing the worst extended stretch of basketball since his rookie year, which is over twenty years ago. Yes, it's actively hurting the Lakers, and we're going to talk about why. But I still don't think he's done. And the funniest thing about it is most of the people that are out there saying stuff about Lebron finally being done are the same people who were wrong last year and the year before, in the year before that, in the year before that, in the year before that. Those
people are shameless. They're just you don't get to just say a guy's washed every single year, be wrong for a half decade, and then finally take a victory lap when you're right. So when that does happen, keep an eye out for that sort of thing. But I'm not here to bury the Lakers. I'm not here to bury Lebron. I'm here to talk some basketball. If you guys want to get into some basketball some of the specific reasons why the Lakers are struggling, you've come to the right place.
Let's go ahead and get into it.
So, first of all, the numbers, the Lakers started ten to four, they were fourth in offense, twenty fifth in defense, twenty fourth in rebounding, twenty ninth in opponent fast break points scored per game. Since then, they're two and five. They're still twenty second in defense, they're still twenty seventh in rebounding. They're still twenty third in opponent fast break points scored over that span, but they've dropped from fourth in offense during the ten and four start to twenty
eighth in offense during the two and five stretch. Since those of you guys who remember my season preview with the Lakers and just in general have watched me talk about the Lakers of the last couple of years, my main point of optimism with this team is that they are an elite offense, and with exception of this two to five stretch, since January, they have been a top
five offense. Their top five offense to end the year last year over the second half of the season, their top five offense to start this year over the first fourteen games. The offensive end is where things have fallen apart. Now, before we get into the offense, I do want to bring just a slight silver lining here those of you guys who listened to the postgame presser with Lebron James yesterday after the Lakers got blown out by the Timberwolves.
He talked about how the Lakers have been working really hard behind the scenes on their defense, specifically a lot of film sessions, a lot of discussion changes in scheme, changes and roles, things along those lines, and it has had some positive returns. Lebron talked about that. One of the things he said in the postgame presser is like, we spent some time working on our defense. We kind of rectified it a bit. Now we need to work on our offense.
And he's right.
In the first seventeen games for the Lakers this year, they were twenty seventh in defensive rating, twenty sixth and defensive rebound percentage, and the Lakers line four games against San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Utah, and Minnesota, they're tenth in defensive rating and sixth in defensive rebounding and it matches up with the eye test. I don't think there are
top ten defense. They also played some limited offenses during that stretch, but overall, I thought the San Antonio and OKAC games were the best stretch of defense this team has played all year. And I thought they were pretty good in the first half against Minnesota, and in general, they're competing a lot better on the defensive class, which is such an important part of the scheme that they're playing.
You saw it a lot against Minnesota again last night, Like when the Lakers are solving their problems by allowing AD to switch ball screens, that puts AD on the perimeter guarding ball handlers. When those guys miss shots, or when they move away and somebody else misses a shot, suddenly the guy AD was guarding underneath the basket is pinned against a smaller guard and able to get a bunch offensive rebounds, which puts a lot of pressure on the team to crash around to get defensive rebounds. They
have been doing better. So again, there's a tiny little silver lining in the two to five start, which is that the Lakers looked like a pretty unseious defense and defensive rebounding team to start the year. They look much more like a at least a serious defense and a serious defensive rebounding team in the last week or so. Dude, I think they're going to be an elite defense. No, but again, this is not the pathway for this team. The pathway for this team is top five offense, right
around fifteenth in defense. That's where they need to get, and the only way you're gonna get there is through playing serious defense. And they've been playing some serious defense. So I want to at least shine a little bit of a light on that, but the offense has completely fallen off of a cliff. So let's get into the reasons why. First of all, the Lakers shifted from playing more through Ad to playing more through Lebron. Here's some
crazy stats for you. During the ten and four start, when the Lakers were fourth in offense, AD had a thirty one point two percent usage rate and Lebron James had a twenty six point four percent usage rate. During the two to five stretch, since when they're twenty eighth in offense, AD's usage rate has dropped to twenty six point four percent and Lebron's has risen to thirty point
five five percent. So they went from Ad having the usage of a typical lead superstar and Lebron having the eight usage of a typical secondary star to swapping those roles and Lebron's doing more of the offensive lift.
Right.
Here's the problem though, During the stretch where Ad was kind of the primary superstar, he averaged thirty one points on sixty five percent through shooting during this stretch, the seven game stretch where Lebron is more involved, nineteen points per game, five turnovers per game just forty eight percent in true shooting in the last six games, just seventeen points per game forty four percent true shooting. Now, before we get into the details with Lebron, it is a
little more complicated than that. Part of that shift back towards fixing the defensive end has caused Anthony Davis to spend more energy on the defensive end. They've also faced some teams with really athletic guards, and Austin and Dilo have missed a couple of games three I think between the two of them. So if you're facing matchups that kind of make life harder for Austin and Di Loo and Austin and Dilo missed time, and Ad is shifting
more of his energy towards the defensive end. Who's the natural guy who's gonna step in and handle more ball handling in that situation. Lebron James, and he's been bad, and so the offense has fallen apart. So let's dig into how Lebron has been bad. Physically, I don't think he looks that different than he did last year. I'd argue he's a little less spry, not as like engaged in the half court, not as many possessions where it feels like he really gets ahead of steam, right, but
not so much that he should be this spat. So let's look at the shooting percentages and Lebron's last six games. He's got seventeen points per game on forty four percent through shooting. Where have the misses been. He's three for thirty on threes, and he even lights out on those for over a year. And he's just ice cold right now. The Minnesota game in particular, most of his misses from three are on the outside of the rim. That's always a dead giveaway. Like Dalton Connect, for instance, had a
rough shooting night last night. The Dalton Connect misses, they were like rattling in the rim and popping out. Lebron was like, it's like wide left and just just carroning off the side of the rim. He's missing bad right now. He's in one of the worst shooting sums I've seen him be in.
It's not pretty.
I think he's missed like nineteen consecutive threes, right, And to be clear, that generally affects other parts of your game. But we'll get into that in a minute. He's eleven for twenty three from the mid range, which is actually pretty good. That's forty eight percent. That's pretty far above league average. He's fine there right, seven for twenty on shots in the paint, but outside the restricted area, these
are your short range touch shots. He was forty two percent on those last year, so down a little bit. But he makes eight for twenty instead of seven for twenty, and suddenly he's at forty percent, so not really much of a factor there. He's twenty two for thirty five in the restricted area at sixty three percent on six attempts per game. Now, last year he was at eight attempts per game in the restricted area seventy three percent, so ten percent better, and about twenty five about thirty
three percent more volume increase. Right, So he's down a good amount at the rim. But I actually do think that has more to do with his jump shot than it does with his age. When you go through a shooting slump like Lebron is in, it makes the game so much harder. Guys don't close out on you as hard as they usually do, they don't pressure you as much. That makes it harder for you to get downhill. Not to mention the mental aspect, like when you're not making shots,
you start to lose confidence. That causes you to try to force the issue a little bit. I saw a lot of that last night he gets Minnesota or it felt like Lebron was trying to force his way into a rhythm. I would actually argue his jumper being off is playing a much bigger role in this struggle for Lebron than his age is. Then there's the issue that with the turnovers, right, some of that's related to his
shooting too. Just to put it really simply, the less effective Lebron is as a jump shooter, the hard it is for him to get to the rim. The harder it is for Lebron to get to the rim when he's also in a shooting slump, The less effective overall
he is as a scorer. The less effective Lebron is overall as a scorer, the less the defense is going to overplay him, the less the defense is going to overplay him, The harder it's going to be for him to find those passing windows, right, those windows get tighter. Some of it's also general focus. Lebron has been having two or three, like really head scratching turnovers per game where he's just clearly not as focused as he needs to be. And then, as I mentioned earlier, it's the
mental aspect too. As you lose your confidence, you start to try to force things a little bit. You probably have heard Lebron talk a lot in his postgame pressers in the last week about rhythm. It's kind of like
a mythological basketball concept, but it's real. Talk to any basketball player, anybody who played at a real level, they will tell you it's real, and like when you have There's a bunch of different ways that people refer to it, right Like, I've heard rhythm, I've heard like, I've heard confidence, I've heard verve, I've heard flow. You know, it's like
your mojo as a basketball player. There's a lot of different ways to refer to it, but all it is basically is that whenever you're playing good basket cake ball, it tends to feed on itself and make you play even more good basketball. When you play bad basketball, it has a tendency to feed on itself and you play worse basketball. I'll give you an example. If you're playing good basketball, like if Lebron comes out in the game tomorrow and I think it's in Miami or Atlanta, I
can't remember exactly where it is. But when he goes out on the road in his next game, if he comes out and he hits a couple of above the break threes early in the game, suddenly he's gonna feel more confident. Right Let's say that he catches on the wing after that, and he pump fakes and the dude chases him off the line because he just made too and he drives, and when he drives, he drops it
off to Anthony Davis and Anthony Davis gets a dunk. Now, Lebron's starting to feel himself a little bit, starting to feel good. Let's say he goes out on the other end, then he like a low man rotation, where maybe if he's not in as much of a groove, he's less willing to make that rotation. But when he's feeling good about himself and he's feeling like I'm having a great game right now, he might make a much greater effort on a low man rotation and block like bam Adebayo
on a rim finish or something. And then suddenly he's bringing the ball to the floor. In transition, he's spraying it out to a shooter and it's like it just kind of gains this momentum and it just turns into this, like it just turns into this runaway train. In a good way, the exact same thing can happen in a negative way when things are not going your way like a lot of times, like when your SHOT's not falling. Is also when you start to force some bad passes.
Is also when you start to get discouraged and not sprint back in transition. Is also when you start to lose that confidence and energy that drives you to make those extra efforts and extra intentional plays on the defensive end of the floor. It all kind of feeds into itself, and Lebron right now is just in a really really bad place as a basketball player. He's not doing anything really that well. He's been okay on the defensive end and rebounding over the course of the last week, like
the rest of the team has been. But I even saw a lot of possessions last night where it's like, Okay, you're on on the island with Mike Conlay and he's just going right around you, like slide those feet.
Man. I mean, I know you're old, but so is he. You know what?
I mean like he can be better on that end too. It's just he's in a really bad place and so he's gonna have to find his way out of it. I do think his head is in the right place. I think it was Dave mcmanhamon last night asked him like, hey, when you're in a struggle like this, like what do you do? And Lebron had a lightning quick answer, and it's an answer that every young basketball player should pay attention to.
Work. Just work.
The best way for you to gain footing when you're in a shooting slump is to shoot the damn basketball behind the scenes as much as you possibly can and derive confidence from that process. Go into that next above, the break three that you take off of that Chicago action out of the right corner as you're rising up, thinking in the back of your head, I made this shot one hundred times this morning. I made it one
hundred more times yesterday. I made five hundred other threes from other spots of the floor over the last couple of days. When you feel that confidence, it helps you think more about the fact that you've been making this shot NonStop for the last two days instead of the fact that you missed four of them two days earlier when you were playing in Minnesota, right, Like you need
to gain confidence from your work. It's like that famous line from Carmelo Anthony and the commercial, why wouldn't I want the last shot when I know I've already taken it?
And it shows him doing.
The little drill with the where he's shooting the one dribble pull up at the elbow in a gym by himself, and that's the truth. That's like, I had a really, really bad shooting slump my third year in college. I was a very streaky shooter when I was in college because I had a lot of issues with my form that I hadn't worked out yet. And my second year in conference play, shot the ball super well, shot like just the shade under fifty percent. I'm pretty good volume
for the entire conference play season in the spring. And then I went to an NAII school the next season and my role changed started getting some different shots, and I shot terribly and I had to stretch in the non conference play at the beginning of the season where I missed twenty two straight threes and I never got to the point where I shot the ball great that year but I did shoot the ball better in the
second half of the season. I was in like the mid thirties during conference play, and a big part of that was I like was obsessively working behind the scenes because I fucking hated being a terrible shooter. I was like, I gotta fucking figure this shit out, you know, like it agonizes you and you've just you have to confront it with work. It's the only way to work through
this kind of thing. The second thing that I would say, I also think a great strategy to get out of slumps is to focus on making winning plays to build confidence. And this is where Lebron being such a big athlete
is such an advantage. Like there was a play in the Minnesota game last night where he got inside position on a rebound against Nikile Alexander Walker, and he got an offensive rebound put back, and it's like, that's worth just as many points as him running a well executed Spain pick and roll where the threat of his shot forces the guy to chase over the top and he gets downhill and he dunks the ball right the same points. If anything, it's more valuable because you turned a miss
in two points on an offensive rebound. You turn bad offense into good offense. When you make a good play like that, it feeds you a little bit of confidence. And so by focusing on the defensive end, grabbing key defensive rebounds, making key rotations, engagement in terms of your screening and crashing on the offensive end, to just try to squeeze out every little bit of winning basketball you can out of your natural gifts that are not dependent
on making shots. That will build confidence and that will bring him out of this. For the record, I'm not saying this stuff is some sort of like tip for Lebron.
He knows this shit.
I was like thinking about this last night, like a lot of people are ready to be done with Lebron in terms of like him being washed right, And I just if I know anything about Lebron, I know that his actual is going to be He's gonna be profoundly irritated by how poorly he's playing, and he's going to work obsessively to try to fix it. Does that mean he's going to get back to the level that he was at at the tail end of last season. I
don't know. That was a pretty damn high level. That might have been the last great chance that the Lakers had was when Lebron and AD were at the level they were last year. Maybe, but I do think Lebron is going to get much much better over the course of this season. I think he's going to find a
way out of this stretch. So like to make a long story short with the Lebron stuff, though, as it pertains to what's wrong with the Lakers now, he took over a larger portion of the offensive load while playing the worst basketball he's played in over two decades, and that's gonna nuke just about any offense. But there are some others with the offense other than d Lo. Every other Laker offensive player is kind of in a little
slump of their own. Like Delo's gain and steam, they would have gotten blown out in that first half last night if not for him. He had fifteen plus points in four straight games. He's twelve for twenty six from three in those games. That's forty six percent on six attempts per game. Delo's getting out of his slump that he was in to start the year. But here are some other guys in their stats over the two and
five stretch. AD twenty two points per game, forty nine percent from the field, twenty three percent from three.
That's just bad for ad.
Austin Reeves thirteen points per game, forty one percent from the field, thirty one percent from three, almost as many turnovers as assists. Austin's been down for the most part this year. I don't know if he's dealing with some stuff physically, but there have been some really big games for Austin, but he hasn't been playing like the Austin Reeves that we've grown accustomed to. Right Dalton connect twelve points per game, thirty three percent from three on seven
attempts per game. During the two and five stretch, teams are starting to guard him more aggressively. I watched Minnesota do a lot of top blocking last night, denying face, guarding off the ball. These are the types of aggressive coverages that good shooters will get, and he's going to continue to see them. It's on JJ Reddick to try to turn that into opportunities to could get him free anyway and to weaponize that attention to help the rest
of the offense. Getting him out in transition will help more like transition is where there's chaos and guys can get open and then two using him as a screener. More. JJ already knows that stuff. I don't have to teach him. He's going to be I'm sure he's working on that stuff with his staff as we speak. Riya Chimura eleven points per game, thirty two percent from three over the stretch. Max Christy twenty four percent from three over the stretch. That's the big one. Like the whole team is in
a shooting slump. They're just thirty percent from three over the two and five stretch, just twenty ninth in the NBA over that span. It's also important to mention what I talked about after the Sun's Lakers game.
If you guys, remember when.
Your stars aren't playing well, it creates fewer advantages for your lesser players. When your lesser players are playing with less of an advantage, it exposes them for having lesser abilities. That's just the way basketball works, especially against good teams like a lot of Laker tractors. Detractors have rightfully pointed out that the Lakers are pretty bad splits against good
and bad teams this year, and they do. They're seven and one against teams that are below five hundred five and eight against teams that are five hundred are better. But the thing is you're going to struggle to beat good teams in this league if your stars don't play well. Like that's less to me about like the Lakers roster. Like I think the Lakers won seventeen games against teams that were five hundred better last year, tied to Celtics
for the most in the NBA. Or excuse me, they won seventeen games against teams that were in the top ten in point differential according to Cleaning the Glass, which was tied for the Celtics for the top of the league. Okay, the Lakers were fine against good teams last year, even with their roster limitations. Not good enough to win the title or anything.
But they did well.
The Lakers can beat good teams at a small rate above five hundred, but not when Lebron's playing this bad, and not when Ad is not contributing the way that he did to start the year. Now, one other thing I want to point out before we go big picture. This has been a tough stretch of schedule for the Lakers. Last night was their fifth game and seven nights. Four of those five games were on the road, Both of their back to backs were on the road, which means
they had to get on a plane that night. Four of the five teams they played were over five hundred and several guys for their important guys within their rotation of miss time, de Lo missed a game, Austin missed two games, Ruey missed a game. They'd play our meltroori or for four of those games. So what's wrong with the Lakers? It's a combination of factors. They refocused on defense, which led to Ad devoting more energy in that direction
instead of offense, where he'd been amazing. The Ad shift came with some matchup and injury stuff with the guards that forced Lebron James to take more of an ultra high usage role, and Lebron has played the worst stretch of basketball he's played in over two decades. That poor play from Lebron has made life harder on every other Laker and they have collectively entered into a shooting slum. And it all took place during one of the toughest stretches on the schedule that they will face all year
that cause them to drop a bunch of games. So how do I feel about this team moving forward? More or less exactly how I felt before the season. I think Lebron will play much much better in the long run. I do think they'll get Ad back involved in the offense. The rest of the roster will benefit from Lebron and Ad playing better, which will allow them to play better, and they'll look like the Lakers they have looked like
for the better part of a year now. In the big picture, I still think they're way too unathletic on the perimeter to win four playoff rounds. If they bring in that athleticism through the trade market, specifically at the two and three, it will make life easier on Lebron, Ad and Austin on the defensive end of the four, so that they can play at their best on the offensive end of the four, which is their pathway to becoming a team with two elite units, which is what
they need right now. They're an elite offense that's playing really poorly on offense. But that's what this roster is. It's an elite offensive roster in a bad defensive roster. But they've got some good defensive players, mainly Anthony Davis, as an anchor to where if they can bring in a two and a three that are competent two way players. Suddenly they could be a team that is top ten in like top five in offense and top fifteen in defense. That's a pathway for them. But right now they don't
have those players. It's all theoretical, So it's all about, like again, as I kind of process where I'm at with the Lakers. Overall, it's still exactly where I was before the season, which is if they make If they make the right trade, I think they'll be fun.
I've talked about this before.
With the with so many other teams around the league, but like sometimes as an NBA team in an eighty two game regular season, the job is to survive and to extend out your good stretches as long as possible, and to dig your way out of your bad stretches.
As fast as possible.
Every NBA team it's gonna have three or four stretches where they're just not playing very well for various reasons. Talked about it with the Lakers. Right one of your stars is playing really poorly, your other stars kind of playing poorly. Schedules, really tough role players all go into a shooting slump. You're drop some games, that's gonna happen to other teams around the league. Just about digging your way out of it. The Lakers schedule does lighten up
a little bit from here. They have no back to backs until January, and their next six games are all against teams that are currently either five hundred or worse. Now, all of them are capable of beating the Lakers. The Hawks are capable of beating the Lakers. The Pistons are capable of beating the Lakers. The Heat are capable of beating the Lakers. The Pistons, or excuse me, the Kings are capable of beating the Lakers. So they could just
as easily drop a bunch of these games. But if they play better basketball, if Lebron gets back to form, they should be able to get back on track. These are winnable games for them over the course of the next couple of weeks.
All right, guys, it's all I have for today.
As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. Got a jam packed slate tonight. We're gonna hit a bunch of teams and a bunch of games and some film.
Tomorrow I will see you guys, then the volume What's so Guys?
As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually be really helpful for us. Would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.