LeBron James has never had a 0-4 start to the regular season since his rookie season. After yesterday's loss to the Denver Nuggets, he took the pot on himself: "I didn't play aggressively enough. I always wanted to pass the ball to my teammates after cover and get them involved in the attack, which is why there were so many mistakes. I'll just pay attention to this kind of problem next time, I've encountered this situation many times in my career, and I'm not worried about this. ”
He can not worry about this, but he has to worry about something else. In the most recent edition of ESPN's NBA Power Rankings, the Lakers, who had lost three consecutive games in the opening season, were ranked 25th, followed by the Pacers, Rockets, Kings, Thunder and Magic, who are Bianconang Cup contenders. In that Davis deal that year, the Lakers have given their 2023 first-round swap rights, so we can confirm that the Lakers' rotten does not have any acting ingredients in it, they are real dishes.
When will the Lakers end their losing streak? Looking at their schedule, maybe the breakdown won't come until the 8th to 10th of the season. They will play the Jazz at home and away. If they don't take advantage of these two opportunities, Lakers fans may have to wait until mid-November to face a difficult first victory. At that time, they will have the opportunity to touch fish belly of similar strength a few more times, and even a sweet four-game home court of Kings, Nets, Pistons and Spurs. In any case, by then the Lakers should also win a few games.
It's not that we can't look at the Lakers, it's that the content of the Lakers' game is really rotten. If you watch the battle between Mr. Yang and Master Yin in "Bing with the Ball" this Monday, you must have an impression of the few shining points of the Lakers this season in Yinshi's mouth - defense - .
As a former player of the Iron Pistons and a defensive assistant to the Milwaukee Bucks, Hamm has his own 3C defensive philosophy called "Contain", "Contest", and "Control". He said he now "prides himself on the athleticism, hard work and energy of his players," so he asked players to try not to change their guards when they encountered cover, allowing thick eyebrows to stay under the basket instead of delaying and pinching with his excellent movement ability, while counting on the team's outside players to press the ball more aggressively to push and counterattack.
Four games have passed, and statistically, the Lakers' defense can rank third in the league every 100 rounds, allowing opponents to score only 103.4 points, all because they are the bottom one in the league, and the offense of 97.2 points per 100 rounds is now so difficult. But if you watch the game, you'll see that the data — especially the very small sample size — is also very deceitful. Basketball is not rocket technology, it's not Excel data, and if your offense is rotten like the Lakers, it will definitely drag down your defense. The part of the Lakers' game that looks the best is actually not that good.
Hamm's plan sounded plausible, but executed like a Maginot Line. Westbrook, Lonnie Walker and Austin Rivers can't help but work hard, and James, Davis and Beverley all look like above-average defenders, but he's forgotten one thing: In the NBA world, even the best defenders can't withstand the constant counter-attacks of opponents.
After the loss to the Nuggets, James admitted that poor conversion defense got the team in trouble: "Jokic is one of the best playmakers in the league, and when he grabs the rebound, all five of them are running. We can't find the right guy in the switching defense, maybe we should go back and look at the game video and see how we should improve. ”
At the end of the half today, the Lakers also tied with the Nuggets. But when the Nuggets ramped up their intensity in the third quarter, they went on a 29-9 mini-climax and the suspense ended. By the end of the match, the match between the two sides was 35 to 18.
This is the current situation of this Lakers: every strong team seems to be absent and careless in their games, making you often have a feeling of "the opponent is just like this", but the Lakers did not play much better than the opponent. They can still play a few moves with their opponents when they are sleepy, but once the opponents sit up straight from the couch and seriously want to beat the Lakers, the Lakers are always beaten to the ground in a few rounds. The scene is all too familiar to us: opponents will lock up the box, let the Lakers' shooters clange the iron, and then grab long rebounds and push up the fast attack. One back and forth, seven up and eight down, falling flowers and flowing water, collapsing into an army, leaving only someone to spread their hands and someone to support their waist. Finally, someone was interviewed at a press conference and said to the camera with an expressionless face: "Things will definitely get better." ”
Naive Lakers fans also thought things would get better at one point, but the truth is that things don't get better spontaneously, and if you keep doing the wrong thing, it will only get worse. I'm sure Chinese football fans and investors are deeply touched by this, and whenever you feel that something has bottomed out and rebounded, it always breaks the bottom line and proves that it can actually be worse. In such an atmosphere, pessimism is contagious, and Beverley said to reporters sincerely—not sarcastically—after the game: "So we shot 26% from three-point range today, I thought it was 20%!" Then we voted much better than I thought! ”
There was nothing wrong with his imagination. In the first three games of the Lakers' season, they shot 21.2% of their three-pointers, the second worst of more than 6,100 teams in NBA history that shot more than 100 three-pointers in three games. And what's even scarier is that when you scan the Lakers' roster of players, you don't think that the Lakers' poor three-point shooting percentage is "bad hands." With six teams shooting less than 30.0 percent from three-point range throughout the season since the '90s, it's entirely possible for the Lakers to be a part — and it must be stated that this shooting percentage was shot in the NBA's most projection-oriented era, when opponents "invited you into the urn" and intentionally encouraged the Lakers to shoot more three-pointers.
Opponents with a little basketball IQ don't need to do more research on the Lakers, just need to glance at the Lakers' player list to understand that they really don't need to defend the Lakers' shooters. Four of the Lakers' five most prolific three-point shooters left the Lakers this summer. Monk went to the Kings as a free agent, while Anthony, Avery Bradley and Ellington are still not signed with NBA teams. The foursome provided the Purple and Gold with 49 percent of their three-point production last season, and maybe they each have their own problems, but losing them has left the Lakers with more serious problems.
And it's not just the Lakers' role players who shoot badly. The top of the Lakers' salary pyramid is made up of their Big Three. In the past five NBA seasons, exactly 200 different players have tried at least 1,000 jump shots. In this massive group, Davis ranks 198th with an effective goal rate of 40.9 per cent, while Westbrook is at the bottom with 40.4 per cent. James is one of the best ball handlers in NBA history, which also means that both Davis and Westbrook have to accept a lot of times to catch jumpers, which also means that opponents can relax their defenses against them. In the future, more and more opponents will use centers to defend Wei Shao - perhaps the word defense exaggerates their respect for Wei Shao, in fact most of the time they are just watching from a distance in the box, ready to assist, grab rebounds and wait for Wei Shao to rush in and deliver the hat, while being careful not to let themselves be blown for three seconds.
Will this change? Coach Hammers still looked optimistic, and after yesterday's loss, he confidently told the media: "It's bad to lose, but we've only played four games and we have 78 games to play. For us, there is enough time to rectify the situation. ”
We can think of this as simply hard-mouthed, or as if he had received some kind of commitment. Because Hamm doesn't have the ability to turn a stone, it's hard to imagine how a team that currently has only two players, Matt Lane and Austin Rivers, shooting more than 30 percent from three-point range, would do better without player changes.
The value of Weishao's transaction will not fall, because there is no fall. But the Lakers still have to hurry, the remaining 78 games seem like a lot, but if they lose like this, they will soon fall into the dilemma of "too much, not too much". Woj recently revealed on a TV show that the teams that had discussions with the Lakers over the summer — the Jazz and Pacers — hadn't heard anything from the Lakers since the season began. Multiple sources say Charlotte's Terry Rozier has become a potential trade target for the Lakers. Meanwhile, there are claims that the Lakers have also had preliminary discussions with the Spurs in recent weeks, showing interest in their 3D wing, Josh Richardson.
In any case, if the Lakers want to change something, they have to find a way to send Westbrook away — which may not be Westbrook's problem, but only sending him away will solve the problem. As long as he doesn't want to embarrassingly give the Pelicans both hands to Vambiyama at the end of the season, Pelinka must hurry to do something with the only remaining 2027 and 2029 first-round picks that Will Shaw and the Lakers have.