So far in the 23-24 season, the Lakers have averaged 81.8 points per game in starts, 13th in the league. If you look at it from the perspective of rushing to the championship, it is higher than the 80.7 points of the Timberwolves, the first place in the West, and the 82.5 points of the Clippers in the same city.
Regarding the Lakers' starting scoring, Reaves can't be bypassed.
So far this season, Reaves has played 59.5 percent of his appearances as a substitute. Looking at the 15.4 points per game off the bench alone, if you set the number of appearances to at least 15 games, you can only look at Tim Hardaway Jr., Bogdanovic and LeVert in the league. That said, Reaves provides the Lakers with strong offensive firepower off the bench.
It is precisely because of the existence of Reaves that the Lakers can average 32.6 points per game off the bench, beating the Nuggets' 31.4 points and Celtl's 28.4 points, which means that the Lakers' bench score is not inferior to the top teams.
However, in the rematch against the Mavericks, Ham put Reaves in the starting lineup. The Lakers started the game against the Mavericks and Thunder averaging 94.5 points per game, second only to the Suns, 76ers, Nuggets, Kings and Knicks in the same period. Clearly, Reaves breathed life into the Lakers' starters.
With Reaves back in the starting lineup, Hachimura began to shoulder the burden of the team's bench scoring — shooting 60.5 percent from the field and averaging 12.5 points per game. What's even more surprising is this mid-range shot, with 8.6% of shots and 45.5% of shots. It should be noted that Hachimura has the ability to hold the ball like Leonard, Durant, DeRozan and others, which means that he can effectively digest a part of the ball.
In addition, Wood has also begun to gradually emerge from the previous downturn. A very illustrative point is the three points. Since the rematch against the Mavericks, Wood has a 40 percent three-point rate and is averaging 1.3 shots per game. The result is an average of 8.0 points per game and 10.5 points per game.
More importantly, the strategic significance that Wood brings to the Lakers can be compared to the Bucks' big Lopez, a stable finisher on the outside, who roams the three-point line to contain defenders and open up space.
Perhaps completely out of injury, Vanderbilt has also started to show the excellent defense of last season. For example, in the second game against the Mavericks, he led Irving to 4:03 and first limited the latter to 0 of 3 shots and did not score, and for example, when he played against Alexander for 3:09, the latter limited the shooting rate to only 28.6%.
Although the Lakers only averaged 25 points per game in the league for the same period after Reaves returned to the starting lineup, the player characteristics are all-encompassing. The resulting slump is only temporary, as the Lakers have seen in recent times.
In the end, if the Lakers were to use the Nuggets as their direct rivals, they would only be one center away. To be precise, it can defend against Jokic's "meat shield", just like Gobert of the Timberwolves. After all, judging from the data on paper, the Lakers' starters and benches do not belong to the Nuggets, and the difference is only the interior defense of Jokic.