[OC] Shortcomings Of The Lakers Offense So Far

#PACEtienceOffense

First off, pushing pace should be predicated off of good defense and not just inbounding the ball and pushing.

Secondly, I'm soooo happy we're not going to D'antoni the offense and just put up the first available perimeter shot. Get a good shot and while you swing the ball, you're creating energy/synergy amongst yall.

Lastly, small ball will help with pace on offense, but the idea is to be disruptive enough on defense to create those fastbreak opportunities....so I hate to be redundant here, but switching everything wildly isn't the idea. Creating organized chaos on D with our speed/length, waiting for the right moment to double and not gambling in the passing lanes is what is going to generate our most efficient offense.

 

Good breakdown of our preseason offense with video clips. Was trying to describe the common actions out of this in the OP. Overall, this is pretty lackluster for a half court offense (you'll hear LF share his thoughts at the end), but we've been able to get by because of how good the PnR is. Still, there's a lot more potential here, and I hope Walton sees that.

Excited for the start of the regular season!

 

This guy isn't a fan either...

 

With our shutdown defense, who needs offensive sets?

 

Yeah I'm not really sure what the problem is. We had the 2nd fastest pace last year, 2nd most points in the paint, and besides the 3pt shooting and free throws our offense was solid last year. We haven't had issue putting points on the board so far in preseason. This is much ado about nothing.

 

Having faith is fine, but it is ignorant to dismiss the VIDEO evidence right in front of you. Pace and PnR are decent options in the preseason when everyone is getting their s*** together and teams haven't solidified how they defend the PnR. But you have to think playoffs here. The game slows down in the halfcourt, and suddenly you're forced to actually execute an offense. Remember the 2016 finals?

I'm not sure where 18 months of being "wildly successful" is coming from, especially given 18 months ago we were in the lottery, and 8 months ago out of the playoffs.

We had a good offseason, but it's still on the coaching staff to put us in a position to succeed. I've seen plenty of teams be well constructed but fail in offensive execution over the years. 2012-2013 Lakers comes to mind, for one.

 

Did you watch the linked video? Do you know what we execute in the halfcourt?

Posters here seem to believe we can just push the ball, throw in a little PnR, and we'll be fine. But offense on the NBA level is so much more nuanced than that. And if you understand what other teams are running, you will be disappointed with what the coaching staff has come up with so far.

 

I've watched every preseason game and the offense is the least of my concerns. I see what other teams are running. I still am not concerned. No matter how hard you try to convince everyone that we can't say "it's preseason"........it's preseason. We just got our starting PG back last night. Lineups are changing every night. There's more to running a set than following a diagram. You need to build trust knowing guys will be where they should. With all of our ballhandlers, sets will probably have an option A,B,C,D,E and involve making the correct read. It's not as simple as just going through the motions in practice and then implementing in games. Our offense looked horrible to start last year too. We may not have run a lot of different sets, but we were a good offensive team without any shooting or surefire go-to guy. Now we've added Lebron, Rondo, Mcgee, and our young guys developed? Sorry, I just don't see a reason to worry about the offense yet.

 

One of the most troubling things is how much our fan base has turned into an echo chamber as of late. I can make a post here about "OMG Ingram is going to be an all star I know it" that will get 20 likes, whereas actually breaking down our sets and plays and showing why they are suboptimal gets criticism - even though there's a huge difference in the quality of analysis being done.

There's many great things to look forward to: young talent, James, cap space, etc. But it's also prevented us from looking at things objectively when we need it. No matter how hard we push the ball in transition, how much James praises our youngsters, or how many offseason workout stories we hear about our guys, you can't ignore failures in technical execution, which is what this topic is about.

I understand this makes me sound exceedingly negative, but you can't even take a team as talented as the Warriors and be successful unless you get your s*** together in the half court. And Walton has had 2 training camps to establish even a semblance of an offensive identity, and he's failed. This is something that good teams like the Spurs, Warriors, and C Bags thrive on. They get their players to buy into a system so they execute well even in pressure situations. Now that we have James, we need to start working on this.

And as for the "he'll develop more plays during the season argument". It really doesn't hold as much water as you might think. Kerr had instituted major offensive changes at this point in the season for the Warriors. And in 1999 season, were we not running the TRIANGLE offense? Despite it being completely new to nearly everyone on our team and one of the most complicated offenses in basketball history?

I don't mean to be negative. Our franchise, overall, is headed in a positive direction. But poor offensive coaching can be an enormous bottleneck on our ability as a team to realize the potential. And to be outright dismissive of this concern is extremely ignorant, given all the evidence to the contrary.

 

There needs to be an offensive identity. But if we are running an offense that quite honestly is less sophisticated than what most high school teams run... there's problems. Most coaches, even when new, use the preseason as practice for implementing a new system. We have no evidence of that.

Us scoring a lot of points against teams by pushing the ball in transition doesn't set us up for long term playoff success - which is what we want. A smart team like the Warriors or Spurs will just have people run back early rather than going for offensive rebounds, which negates a lot of our ability to get out and run. We have good offensive players, but they need a system to excel in. And after 2 training camps, Walton has failed to come up with anything even halfway decent. I'm not sure why you aren't worried about this, to be honest.

If you watched the video, you would see part of that part of the problem was our sets did not have an option A B C and D for our good passers to take advantage of. That's been at the heart of my criticism. If the first one or two options failed, it would end up in an ISO or post up and a bad shot. This was the same idea last year, and why Ingram looked so awful trying to save our offense in all those ISO situations.

Also I don't know where this - "we were a good offensive team" is coming from. I can post so many breakdowns of why that's not true. But ultimately our offensive rating was 23rd last year - not a great look.

 

Yes we need to shore up defensively

 

I liked this post because you quoted me twice.

 

Actually, there has been tons of criticism of the team over the past several years. We've been debating the pros and cons of pretty much everything about this team from pretty much minute one of this forum.

 

There is validity to what you're saying; I think what Luke lacks for in X's and O's he makes up for in his relationship with players, the joy he brings, his ability to listen, and to push the right buttons to get the most out of a player (generally).

He coached us to 35 wins when BI and Zo were out and we improved defensively; what we're we top 15.

He's young and still learning on the job; and as at Lakers Film Room noted, he usually opens up the playbook as the season progresses. I would say this: I'm going to give it until December to see where we're at; if there is still issues, then I'll criticize.

Right now, I'll give them about a 30-45 days to see how it goes.

 

That said there's valid criticism of the Laker offense. I think most guys are just waiting to really get in depth with discussions of it.

 

Agreed. As we've discussed in the past, we hired a young and inexperienced coach. There's going to be growing pains with him just like our young players.