On December 16, Beijing time, the Lakers won the Lone Ranger in overtime with a difficult three-point kill by rookie Austin Reeves.
Facing the lone ranger without Luka Doncic, the Lakers still stumbled, and although the game was won, the team's performance was unsatisfactory. It is especially worth mentioning that at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters, the Lakers' small-ball lineup made a cameo in the center of LeBron James was madly targeted by the opponent, which almost led to the final overturning, reminding people that this is not the ultimate answer to the Lakers' existing problems.
The Lakers won their 17th championship in franchise history in 2020 in the bubble of Orlando, but after that, Rob Pelinka made a failed reshuffle of the roster, which not only led to their failure to defend their title in the first round of last season, but also to this day.
This summer, the Lakers and wizards completed an earthquake-level deal in exchange for Wei Shao to form the Big Three. This combination has been questioned from the beginning, the adaptability of Westbrook and James is visible on paper, and the Lakers management is not ignorant, they just chose a big gamble in the case of limited resources.
So the beginning of the season to the present, the Lakers' situation is frequent, and the performance has not met the expectations of the outside world. Injuries, run-ins, poor shooting feel, and so on, etc., "hold the gourd up the scoop", Vogel can only have a headache and heal the feet, solve a problem counts as one.
Among all the Lakers' problems, the offensive end can not open the space is the most prominent one. Wei Shao itself lacks stable projection ability, coupled with the Lakers rotation lineup with Howard, Jordan Jr., two traditional blue-collar workers, thick eyebrows and always feel cold, so that opponents can arbitrarily shrink the defense line, prevent James, Wei Shao's impact on the inside line.
The ultimate goal of basketball is to put the ball into the basket, and Vogel, although a defensive coach, knows that this is the first problem he needs to solve. So he thought about it and made a bold and avant-garde decision to let James make a cameo center and play a pure small lineup.
As an unborn athletic prodigy, James has always "claimed" to be able to play from the first position to the fifth position, but in his previous 18 years of career, the other four positions have indeed been tried, but never really played center. Vogel's arrangement has a gambling component of "being a live horse doctor", after all, James will soon be 38, let him play five, the offensive end is still good to say, and the hard top inside line when defending is really difficult.
Or the analogy of Teacher Su Qun: James playing five is like opening the floor to leak water, and the top and bottom leaks, depending on whether it is fast or fast.
Today's game is an example: the Lakers originally had a perfect start, taking a double-digit lead 33-23 in the first quarter, but after the second quarter began, the thick eyebrows went off the field, there was no real big man on the court, and the other side sent Porzingis and Kleber both to guard the basket height and pull away the flexible interior line of shooting. So the Lakers attacked and defended at both ends of the frequent setbacks, waiting for Vogel to react, re-replace the thick eyebrows, it was too late, by the opponent to play a wave of 15-0, the trend of victory and defeat reversed.
A similar plot was re-enacted in the fourth quarter, almost exactly the same problem, resulting in the Lakers being played a wave of 7-0 by the opponent in the first three minutes of the quarter, so the score that was painstakingly recovered in the third quarter was instantly re-opened.
Fortunately, the other side is missing the number one star after all, and in the moment of life and death, luck is on the side of the Lakers, which saves Vogel from paying the price of losing for his platoon deployment.
The NBA game is changing rapidly, "one game theory" is never advisable, and Vogel's small-ball lineup is not useless. In fact, this attempt, in many previous competitions, has received some good results.
According to the NBA's official website's high-level statistics: This season, when Howard, Jordan Jr. and Thick Brow were not present, James led the team to play a total of 78 minutes as a center (as of today), during which the Lakers can score 112.4 points per 100 rounds, only conceded 104.3 points, 8.2 points per 100 rounds, 65.7% assist rate, and 61.9% of true shooting, all better than their season average performance.
As a comparison: the Lakers' total 100-game score this season is 107 points, losing 107.2 points, net negative 0.2 points per 100 rounds, assist rate of 58.5%, and true shooting rate is only 56%.
But James playing five is not a long-term solution after all, nor should it become a conventional weapon for the Lakers, let alone a master key to solve all problems. Today's NBA, with such emphasis on speed and space, no team can really abandon the center and play a small lineup from beginning to end. Kevin Rooney is still the Warriors' starting interior lineman, and Lue, who had a huge success with a small-ball lineup in the playoffs last season, still put Zubac in his opening lineup...
Objectively speaking, the current Lakers cannot be said to be terminally ill, but it is also difficult to rely on a certain "prescription" to cure the disease. Westbrook's condition is gradually improving, but his natural mismatch with this team is a fundamental problem, so recent rumors have appeared that the Lakers are considering sending him away.
But Wei Shao has two years left on his contract, with a total salary of more than 81 million, and in his current state, it is difficult to find a receiver. Therefore, the More realistic expectation of the Lakers is that the thick eyebrows will quickly recover from the state.
Thick eyebrows, as the representative of the new interior line, this season's three-point shooting rate is less than 20%, and today it is a 3-shot loss, two of which are almost three. Thick eyebrows were once considered the perfect partner for James, and the two had a successful collaboration, but only if he could play his due role.
So far this season, Thick Brow has missed three games due to injury, the Lakers have won all, when he is on the floor, the Lakers only scored 106.1 points per 100 rounds, but they had to concede 108.2 points, and the net win value on the court was -2.2 points. Although we cannot judge that the presence of thick eyebrows has a negative effect on the Lakers, there is a big gap between such thick eyebrows and our impressions and expectations of thick eyebrows.
Today's game, thick eyebrow injury returned, although 20 points and 12 rebounds, but actually only played a good game, 8 of 18 shots in the whole game, and there were as many as 6 mistakes. Apparently, he is far from recovering to his personal best.
Again, the Lakers' struggling performance is the result of many factors working together, and it is by no means a set of unconventional lineups that can be solved. Putting it all together, their most realistic expectation now is the early return of the thick eyebrow we are familiar with. Because compared with Westbrook, he is the one who can really share the pressure of James.