Put the D in D'Antoni

D12 can't guard the 5 players on the floor ... the concept of defensive rotations is something this team isn't aware of ...

Anyways , D12 isn't close to the incredible athlete he was prior to the back surgery ... and I have serious doubt he can become this freak of nature again ... which of course doesn't help us

maybe their trying to oust dantoni, to get phil. who knows ever since the hire we've been looking horrible.

thkthebest wrote:Lol. I know what you mean, but Dwight clearly isn't close to 100%. He's made some big improvements since his first game as a Laker, but he's still got a ways to go. I think he said he'd be close to 100% in January or something, but we'll see about that.

We actually probably won't see Dwight at his full potential until next season since a lot of what you do in the NBA is a result of the work you put in the offseason.

Still not an excuse. Dwight might not be 100% but his team mates currently are better defensively than what he had in orlando. Cmon, are jameer nelson, vince carter, rashard lewis are defensive stalwarts? Even the team now is currently better defensively than whatever prime kg had in minesotta.

Even slow, lazy bynum was able to make the team play great defense, especially during the later half of phil's last season. Not only is he never recognized for his defense, bynum couldn't work out in the offseason that year because he delayed surgery.

If non-franchise player like him could do that, I should expect a 2-time defensive player of the year and best center in the league to at least make this team better than average defensively despite the issues. I don't know what's going on, but his defense right now is like lebron, kobe, durant becoming arron afflalo just because they lost some athleticism.

They're way too good to let something like that to happen and Howard should be the same given his defensive accolades. If he wants the keys to the franchise, he should be held to such standards.

this Team is garbage on defense and has been so for 30 games now.

They aren't trying hard enough, simple and plain. Any team with Kobe, Dwight and Artest should be at least average. They are flat out getting pounded right now. Its embarrassing because its a lack of effort.

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:

Doc Brown wrote:

Dave McMenamin ‏@mcten
D'Antoni: "We have too many guys that will take a possession off"
Expand Reply Retweet Favorite

This goes with my point above. One person takes a possession off and screws everyone else up.

He won't say it but he's talking mostly about Kobe. His poor defense is cancerous to the team.

He said we have too many guys. Kobe would be one.

Sums our pbs up perfectly

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
Kobe said " our transition defense is bad, our half court defense is good" disagree - maybe it could start with him actually trying on D

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
Kobe keeps on talking about "fast break points" in his postgame interview. Utah scored 19 points on the break. 117 for the game

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
He's just flat wrong, they have no defensive identity they don't limit penetration and off the ball nobody is guarding their man. Its brutal

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
Also the Jazz shot 54% and 42% of the time they rebounded their misses (OREB%) that has nothing to do with "transition D

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
A team with Dwight Howard at C should never let a team rebound 42% of their misses at the offensive end, he's being forced to help too much

Haralabos Voulgaris ‏@haralabob
due to Lakers inability to stop penetration and just flat out being beat on the perimeter both on and off the ball.

Actually, I don't know Haralabos Voulgaris, but he makes some obviously false statements. Transition D can affect your ability to get rebounds. And failing to score in fastbreak but getting a rebound won't show up as fastbreak points, but it's still transition D. I'm not saying he's wrong in his conclusions, but his inferences don't work.

Transition Defense! Said D'Antoni never.

trodgers wrote:

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:

Doc Brown wrote:

Dave McMenamin ‏@mcten
D'Antoni: "We have too many guys that will take a possession off"
Expand Reply Retweet Favorite

This goes with my point above. One person takes a possession off and screws everyone else up.

He won't say it but he's talking mostly about Kobe. His poor defense is cancerous to the team.

He said we have too many guys. Kobe would be one.

I think he's talking about Kobe, but using the plural to cover his butt. The sentence before the one quoted is something like; "we have guys going one on one....". The possessions off line comes right after and it seems linked and in the same breath.

Yeah but MWP goes one on one too much, too. Meeks, too. Check GD thread to see our fans crucifying both of them. I'll take him at face value here.

No one was playing good D last night. You can blame every one of them, and that includes our former defensive player of the year D12 who couldn't do anything to stop Al Jefferson who was just lighting him up. Everyone takes the blame for last night's debacle. One guy can't take the blame for a 115 point drubbing by a lousy road team in Utah. Collective lack of effort, and collective failure to prepare by the coaching staff as well. No one gets off blameless in that loss. It was inexcusable on all of their behalf's.

gotta get kobe to buy in on defense. can't believe i'm saying that, but as others have indicated: he's the prime culprit in the "taking plays off" category. his teammates see it.

that said, in previous games, rotations (lack thereof) were killing the lakers. in last night's game, they mostly got torched in isolation plays that either resulted directly in a score (kanter, millsap), or in the total breakdown of the team d. that's a personal accountability issue. nobody on utah is that good.

Maybe. What players meet both criteria (one on one, possessions off)? I think MDA linked the two statements to refer to one person.

The defense is atrocious. It has been all season. No rotations, no communication, no effort. I liked what Rambis said during the halftime show. Defense is about your 4th, 5th, and 6th effort; we don't give any effort.

It's come to the point where I think we're going to need to outscore everybody because we can't stop anyone. Offense doesn't seem to be a problem. There was a stat last night thrown out during the Utah game that we were averging 108 points a game.

So what do we do? Sho some effort, communicate, rotate, help each other, get back in transition, etc.

There's too much helping where there is no help needed.

Kobe, Duhon, Metta all leave their shooters to try to do something in the paint. This causes the team to go into a scramble rotation mode and leaves shooters wide open.

Don't know how many times they have to get rained on to learn, DWIGHT IS THERE TO PROTECT THE PAINT. If he's going to help, someone box out his man. Ugh, it's not that hard.

The team is too old to be playing at such a high pace. Not enough energy/depth for D.

Pace this season - 93.9

Pace last season - 90.5

Where are you getting those numbers from? I see them at 96.5 this season 92.9 last season.

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamst ... order/true

95+ puts you at the top of the league while ~93 puts you near the bottom.

Basketball reference has a Pace stat. So do I. They measure things slightly differently.

I know D'antoni isn't known for his defense and all, but come on, when you watch these games the defensive lapses are pretty clearly from players deciding to just take possessions off or otherwise half [Swearing is not permitted at Clublakers. You must edit this post prior to submitting.] things. Get that sorted first and we can start talking about the finer points of what D'antoni does and doesn't offer defensively, but until the team is actually giving a crap about it, you really can't lay this all on him.

trodgers wrote:Basketball reference has a Pace stat. So do I. They measure things slightly differently.

It seems the pace is measured differently but the Lakers are still 4th in pace and #7 in offensive rating compared to 20th in pace last year and the Knicks are 24th in pace and still #2 in offensive rating according to basketball-reference.

Forward Three wrote:I know D'antoni isn't known for his defense and all, but come on, when you watch these games the defensive lapses are pretty clearly from players deciding to just take possessions off or otherwise half [Swearing is not permitted at Clublakers. You must edit this post prior to submitting.] things. Get that sorted first and we can start talking about the finer points of what D'antoni does and doesn't offer defensively, but until the team is actually giving a crap about it, you really can't lay this all on him.

Focusing all energy on O = not enough energy left for D.

^
Last season:
Pace: 90.5 (20th)
Offensive Rating: 106.0 (10th)
Defensive Rating: 104.4 (13th)

This Season
Pace: 93.9 (4th)
ORtg: 108.4 (7th)
DRtg: 105.1 (15th)

Well, looking at the two seasons, I don't know what conclusions you draw. I have some ideas of my own.

From October 21st:

Punk-101 wrote:

Dwight Asking Lakers Not To Gamble On Defense
Oct 21, 2012 12:01 PM EDT


Dwight Howard is the NBA's single most influential defensive player and he is already asking his new teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers to play a certain way on that end of the floor.

“The biggest thing is we don’t have to gamble,” said Howard. “That’s the one thing I told those guys — don’t gamble. We’re solid on defense, we work hard for 24 seconds on defense and then we’re out.

“That’s when you put everybody else in bad predicaments, when you do gamble. But when we’re solid, we have some great defenders on the wing. We have some great defenders on the post. So there’s no need to gamble. We all just have to trust our instincts and play the right way.”

Translation: Kobe, no more roaming free-safety leaving wide open 3pt shooters.

trodgers wrote:^
Last season:
Pace: 90.5 (20th)
Offensive Rating: 106.0 (10th)
Defensive Rating: 104.4 (13th)

This Season
Pace: 93.9 (4th)
ORtg: 108.4 (7th)
DRtg: 105.1 (15th)

Well, looking at the two seasons, I don't know what conclusions you draw. I have some ideas of my own.

I wasn't really trying to compare this season and last season all that much other than maybe question why an old team that's a year older is playing at a higher pace.

My conclusion is that since they're an older team being forced to play at a high pace, they don't have the energy to put the needed effort on defense. I believe they should play like the Knicks, who are built somewhat similarly and are even older, because they have a higher offensive rating while playing at a slower pace. The Knicks prove you don't need to be running up and down the court jacking up shots to have a top-ranked offense. I think that because the Knicks play at a slower pace, they have more energy to focus on defense while the Lakers, who play at a higher pace running up and down the court, have less energy for defense.

While the Lakers have a relatively good offense, it's not an all-time great offense with enough firepower to consistently outscore everyone like those Phoenix Suns teams. It reminds me more of previous Warriors teams where they ran and scored a lot and it was fun to watch but not great enough to overcome mediocre/poor defense.