It took the Los Angeles Lakers less than a week to go from vulnerable to dominant.
After the Lakers offensively finished 20th (out of 22 teams) in the Seeding Games and lost an ugly Game 1 with the Portland Trail Blazers in their first round, they seem to have found the groove they were in, when they briefly defeated the Milwaukee Bucks and LA Clippers before the season was suspended in March. Their most complete reboot performance came on Monday when they put the Blazers (135-115) 3-1 ahead.
> Game 5: Lakers vs. Trail blazer; Wednesday 9 ET on TNT
The Lakers were leading 15-0, 24-8 (appropriate on Mamba Day) and 38-14. It started with a stifling defense that left Portland goalless with its first seven possessions. It went on with a ridiculous insult. The Lakers averaged 43 points (1.79 per possession) in their first 24 possessions and averaged over 1.5 points per possession by the end of the third quarter.
LeBron after the game the Lakers dedicated to Kobe Bryant: “When I looked up to see we were 24-8 up, I thought, okay, he’s here in the building. It’s a nice, nice night for our franchise and something that we will always remember – this moment. ” pic.twitter.com/Q4AekQHNjP
– Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) August 25, 2020
To properly illustrate his team’s newfound offensive rhythm (and get some TV viewers to bed early), LeBron James (30 points, six rebounds, and 10 assists) casually kicked a 36-foot-3 pointer to line up the Lakers 38 left at 9:21 in the third quarter.
Good night.
But not a perfect night. Anthony Davis, after shooting 7-8 from the middle, had a back problem early in the third quarter. The Blazer lost Damian Lillard in the middle of the third half to a right knee injury.
The blazers say Lillard will have a second on his knee on Tuesday.
The results of an MRI on Damian Lillard’s right knee tonight were inconclusive. Lillard will do a second MRI in Orlando on Tuesday afternoon.
– Portland Trail Blazer (@trailblazers) August 25, 2020
Davis, who felt comfortable on the Lakers bench in the second half, said after the game that his back was “fine”.
The stat
10 for 18 – The combined 3-point shooting by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green and Kyle Kuzma.
Davis suddenly turns Dirk Nowitzki out of midfield (where he’s been 11 against 13 in the last two games) and James, who, like Lillard, pulls 3 pointers out of the logo, is nice. But these two guys’ jump shooting is unsustainable despite the Lakers being responsible for how badly they shot before Game 3. Davis was a 35% middle distance shooter in the regular season while James shot only 33% on pull-up 3s.
The stars’ best work is done in the color. And against better defensive teams, they need the supporting cast to take shots, either to make room for Davis and James, or to punish the defenses for clogging the paint.
Green was 12:44 (27%) out of the 3-point range in the Lakers’ first eleven games in Orlando. Caldwell-Pope was 5-23 (22%) from outside the arc through Game 1 of the first round before finding his shot in Game 2. Kuzma shot well in the seeding games but was 2-10 from beyond the arc through the first three games of the series. These are the three shooters who will spend the most time with Davis and James. Your own success is and will remain crucial.
There will be ups and downs. The Lakers can take the defense any night, but the main focus remains on their shots. It doesn’t have to be an elite, but if it does, the Lakers are in good shape. They are now 20-1 this season (with 13 of the wins being at least 15 points) when they shot 40% or better with 3 pointers, and the only loss was their last seeding game in which James played less than 15 minutes and Davis wasn’t playing at all.
The film: defense first
Winning ugly is also an option. From the way they defended in the first few minutes on Monday, the Lakers weren’t expecting all the shots to be fired. Davis in particular was a defensive force as Portland went goalless on its first seven estates.
“He was absolutely dominant to start this game tonight,” said Lakers coach Frank Vogel. “He had several blocks, distractions, containment games. He was on the defensive everywhere and then he did everything.”
Here are the first seven possessions for Portland:
Some things to consider …
1. The blazers don’t run very sharply through their set. One might wonder how tired her legs are in their 13th game in 25 days, with the first 10 being within five points in the last five minutes. CJ McCollum rejects a Nurkic screen to stay away from Davis, and Green stays with him to deny a harsh step backwards.
2. Davis distracts a long pass to Lillard. After the blazers arrive, they get their only decent catch-and-shoot look of the sequence, but (after James helps out on McCollum’s ride) Green gets out to take on Carmelo Anthony’s left wing 3.
3. McCollum tries to drive past Davis. Block.
4. Bird on Davis: “He had a game in which he had two distractions on either side of the man he was guarding [Jusuf Nurkic]and then he dove on the floor and got a loose ball and got us on break. “
5. JaVale McGee stands ready to stop Lillard from shooting Hassan Whiteside from the screen, Davis turns on the reel to Whiteside and Green sinks to Nurkic until McGee recovers. Anthony attacks the color, but James stays with him to prevent a rhythmic regression. Anthony’s double clutch attempt is well contested.
6. Davis steps forward to catch Whiteside’s scroll in the middle of the lane, but smears the shot on him. James immediately tells him to go straight up with his arms. Whiteside goes 0-for-2 off the line.
7. Anthony puts a screen on the elbow for Lillard pushing through for a layup … which is blocked by Davis.
The Blazers’ gap to this final possession was pretty close, and Blazer’s coach Terry Stotts gave up the two-center line-up shortly thereafter. Before Monday, Portland had been much better off with Nurkic and Whiteside than with just one of them. But the first 4:50 of the first quarter was all we saw of the two-center look in Game 4 (Gary Trent Jr. started the second half instead of Whiteside), and Stotts could handle that overall.
What’s next?
The blazers were about to end. But that game was against the Brooklyn Nets. Game 5 on Wednesday (9 p.m. ET, TNT) is against a 52-19 team that suddenly found their groove, and there’s no word yet on whether Lillard will be available.
“It’s a game at a time,” said Stotts. “You can break any cliché, but we know what to expect when you play 3-1 against a good team.”
Stotts can hope (and probably expect) that the Lakers don’t shoot as well from the outside. Regardless of whether Lillard plays or not, the Blazers offense will continue to struggle with LA locked up defensively. Game 4 was the Blazer’s best offensive game in the series, but the Lakers obviously took their foot off the accelerator when they were 38. Even with a 64-point half on Monday, the Blazers were kept under one point per possession in the series.
The Lakers could earn some time out with a win on Wednesday. You would play the winner of the Houston-Oklahoma City series next, which is a 2-2 draw and doesn’t end until Friday. As for business, James was saying the right things.
“”[Closing out] is the toughest game of the series, “he said,” because you know the team you are playing against is desperate and they will give you everything they have because they know they can be sent home . So I come in with the same desperate attitude. “
After Game 1, that desperate feeling could come from the way the Lakers were playing. Now the concern could be in the minds of other teams on their way.
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John Schuhmann is a Senior Stats Analyst at NBA.com. You can email him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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