And its official, the Lakers just lost 113-101 to a team on a 8 game loosing streak, that dosnt play defense and they did so by scoring 20 points above their season average.
Chew on that ESPN, please please chew on that.. if anyone has the balls to say the Lakers are playing defense at a better level this year then id like you to see this game.
Now i know the stats say they are playing margianly better, but stats never tell the story, they are absolutly horrible on defense and its absolutly disrespectfull to mention the Lakers as being on par with the Celtics defensively.
The Lakers were playing very good defense, it wasn't a ESPN created fiction. Maybe you should have tried to watch them earlier to see by yourself. After the first 10 games they were leading the league in defensive efficiency.
The problem, and what happened last night has been happening for awhile now, is that their defensive system took the league by surprise, but teams seem to have found good counter-moves. Their system is highly based on traps and pressure, and teams have probably been scouting them very carefully to find weak points; then it relies on having a help line with the two bigs playing behind the key, what is disturbed by jump-shooting, perimeter oriented bigs (very much like the C's, or any other defense who relies on overloading the strongside); then their transition defense has been sucking, Fisher and Kobe (!!) seem a step slower and they're not executing as well as they were by the start of the season. They should try to fight that as soon as possible, once the team stop believing on what they're doing on defense, everybody will stop defending.
I think the qoute you linked is one extreme, but this is the other. They play very good defense, but the problem is they don't have two things we have, a KG'esq big who QB's thier defense agaisnt the pick and roll, and a PG who can deny the other teams sets for as long as rondo does.
One of the biggest things rondo does well is keep the other PG away from the start of the offensive play until 12-15 seconds left in the clock by making them waste so much time getting up court. This in turn limits the other teams options. If thier first run through doesnt work, they have limited time to reset.
The lakers play a similar scheme, but as we saw last night, Gasol and bynum don't cut it as the vocal defensive leaders from behind the perimiter players, and Fisher is to slow to pressure full court. This resulted in the kings having the ablity to probe multiple times off the pick and roll, and either get the shot, or still have 6-10 seconds left on the clock to improvise off the lakers response to the pick and roll.
There a good defensive team, but I don't think gasol or bynum will anchor that defense behind the picks, or that fisher can give them that advantage of a short clock like rondo can.
