In the past we've had great threads that I've enjoyed from poster's like @Panko breaking down rotations and minutes, or @trodgers bringing proprietary analytics to assess players - not to mention the countless great conversations with everyone else. Since we're getting to the end of Free Agency and getting closer to a locked roster for this upcoming season, I thought it would be nice to have a thread where we can talk about how we're going to play and who's going to play. In particular the overall offensive and defensive concepts our roster is capable of and going to play with, the rotations & minute break downs for our guys and micro tactics we're going to employ on a game to game basis. Who plays? How many minutes? How do we play? How do we offend? What our strengths and weaknesses? How do we exploit other teams and not be exploited? Would be great to have a place to post analytics, stats, rotations, concepts etc - hope you all will join me in continuing to make this the best place to talk lakers on the internet.
This video inspired me to create this thread. It goes into our new roster construction and what our front office is trying to achieve with the revamp of our team. Long story short, it looks at net rating and the 6 factors on both sides of the ball important to modern basketball that are divided across three areas; shooting efficiency, the possession battle and second chance opportunities. They are: Shooting Efficiency oTS: Estimates how much a player changes his team's shooting efficiency on offense. Positive means the lineup shoots more efficiently. dTS: Estimates how much a player changes opponent's shooting efficiency. Positive means the lineup suppresses opponent shooting better. Possession Battle oTOV: Estimates how much a player changes his team's offensive turnover game. Positive means the lineup gives the ball away less. dTOV: Estimates how much a player changes his team's defensive turnover creation. Positive means the lineup forces more turnovers. Second Chance Opportunities oREB: Estimates how much a player changes his team's offensive rebounding and second-chance creation. Positive means the lineup creates more extra possessions. dREB: Estimates how much a player changes his team's defensive rebounding and ability to finish possessions. Positive means the lineup finishes more possessions with the rebound. These are the 6 factors that make up the net rating of a team and can be found here: https://databallr.com/teams ------------------------ The video goes into how we've improved with our roster construction and should have a considerably better net rating next year. Last year we were elite in Offensive True Shooting and half court offense. Luka has been a one man wrecking crew across his whole career on this stat, his team's constantly shoot better than league average efficiency. Part of this is in how he plays the game, the pressure he puts on opposition's defences is special. If you don't guard him at the 3 point line, he is just going to bomb away, if you do, he gets into the paint and scores at high efficiency and if you stop him scoring he picks you apart with his passing. Reaves, I believe, can take another step up in this metric next year. I expect him to play even more like a mini Luka hitting more 3's from the perimeter off the dribble and controlling the tempo better. We should have 48 mins of high quality offensive play from our top two guys, alongside some on ball creation from Sexton and Grimes. I really like how many options we have in how we can play offensively; we can play with an effective pick and roll big in Kessler, or Kessler as an offensive rebounder with guard pick and roll play, a pick and pop big in Mamu, a 5 out offense with Mamu or wings, a defensive minded roster that gets out into transition from creating turnovers. We should be a top 5 offense with our oTS and also partly because we're going to improve greatly on the possession battle side. Kessler and Looney are elite offensive rebounders in the top 10 of the league at 5+ per 75 possessions. On top of that we've got a bunch of defensive playmakers that are going to force turnovers with Ziaire and Thybulle being absolute menaces at this - Adou also has great promise on this side of the ball. I have some questions defensively with the starting wing, but if we can solve that, we're going to be a very good regular season team.
Nice thread! I think defensively we are going to be quite interesting. As pointed out in some other thread, the way media people are portraying as worse defensively seems so wrong. I guess time will tell. JJ has been quite creative with defensive schemes. And he just got a top 5 defensive big. I think it's getting underrated that Kessler is on par with Chet on many defensive metrics, only behind Wemby. All in a terrible team. I'm quite eager to see what he does in a winning team. It seems clear we didn't go with 1-on-1 defense but rather accept we will get blown by often. Something we did last year was using a collective approach where you defend by guiding the offensive player to a certain space on the floor, while the rest of the team already knew and could get some steals, stops or just deny the next action. That's where it gets interesting. Because not only you have an elite big, you got steal specialists like Thybulle and Ziaire, Luka is good at it too. So imagine channeling the dribbler towards Kessler and then they are stuck with 2 options: attack Kessler on the paint (which is not a good idea) or kick it to the outside where Thybulle/Ziaire/Luka are ready to steal the ball or deflect it. You can't win. I'm really excited by the vision of the team and I think we will see a blueprint of what's to come in the next years. When we get a couple upgrades via FA/trade or development of our young guys, we will probably be a top contender.
It’s my first thread hehe! I don’t get the whole we’ll be worse defensively talk from media guys… we got rid of Rui, Kennard, Ayton and Hayes and replaced them with Mamu, Sexton, Kessler and Looney. Who are all better defensively than their previous counter parts. We did lose Lebron, but to be honest, he gave maximum effort mainly in the playoff and key matchups only. If we can get a starting 4, that should be a net positive defensively in comparison. Smart’s a big loss, but Grimes is no slouch and will provide a good amount of what smart did on the perimeter. On top of that we added Ziaire and Thybulle who are better than anyone we had last year out of the rotation that left (outside of smart). We should be considerably better defensively out the gate from a personnel only point of view. I’m curious to see how JJ plays it, I assume like you do, that he is going to have us really aggressive on the perimeter and funnelling into Kessler. I’m unsure of the details - does Kessler show up high or does he play drop big only? Are we going to employ also a switching defense when Kessler is off the floor? What about zone? JJ to me is a top defensive coach so far, so I’m really excited for that end of the floor.
Kessler is more drop coverage. He tends to lose a step when he shows up high but from time to time he is able to hold his ground and move well. We probably try to reduce the amount he is exposed though. I think we'll have less switching, certainly not with Kessler. Maybe we switch 1-4 though We should use some zone too, mostly with Mamu I'd guess. Ziaire and Thybulle excel on those as there's more off ball reading and anticipating passing lanes with their length. There's definitely a number of ways we can approach it and the best defenses are the ones that are able to be versatile and show different things to the offense. I think JJ will play a lot with that. Absolutely agree he and the staff are quite resourceful and if he did what he did with so many flawed defensive players, there's certainly an excitement when we had 2 elite and 2 very good defenders to the roster
