There's been a lot of hubbub about the Lakers struggling against the Suns' zone in the last two games of the Western Conferene Finals -- games that resulted in losses for the Lakers. But in actuality, that's not quite true. Yes, the Lakers offense hasn't been quite as effective as the first two games of this series, but they also threw up an out-of-this-world 132.9 offensive efficiency rating in the first two games, according to ESPN's John Hollinger. As TrueHoop's Kevin Arnovitz tweeted shortly after Game 4: "Lakers offensive efficiency in Game 4: 106 points in 90 possessions. (117.8). The problem is the defense." A rating of 117.8 would have lead the league this season. So again: The Lakers have fallen off from the first two games, but it's not exactly like they're struggling to score points. The Suns -- who were one of the best offensive teams of all-time this season -- have simply done what they do and beaten the Lakers in Game 3 and 4. So heading into Thursday night's Game 5, it could behoove the Lakers to try and play better defense. If they continue to stay the course against the zone, it's likely they can set themselves up for a win. But as Hollinger writes in Thursday's PER Diem, a hobbled Andrew Bynum means the Lakers are sporting a more offensive-minded lineup, meaning this series may continue to be a shootout: "In the conference finals, however, it's been entirely one-sided in favor of the offense. Partly, that's because L.A. has been forced to use a more offense-minded lineup for much of the time due to Andrew Bynum's continued knee problems. The Lakers with Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom in the frontcourt are a joy to watch offensively, but playing Gasol at center can create problems at the other end -- which is why L.A.'s 2008 journey to the Finals, sans Bynum, came as a much more offensive-minded outfit than its 2009 champions ... Alas, Phoenix has scored against L.A.'s formerly airtight defense at an even greater clip than in the regular season. The Suns fired off 121.1 and 130.6 marks in Games 3 and 4, which made it virtually impossible for the Lakers to prevail no matter what they did on their end. Even in the two L.A. games, the Lakers weren't exactly airtight: The Suns' 109.3 and 112.5 marks in those two contests rivaled their league-leading regular-season mark, but the Lakers were so good offensively that it became irrelevant." Source: ESPN
LOS ANGELES (AP)—The Lakers’ swagger is more of a stagger after consecutive losses in the Western Conference finals. After leaving town last week to chants of “We want Boston,” Kobe Bryant(notes) and Pau Gasol(notes) realize they won’t even get the chance to defend their NBA title unless Los Angeles starts defending the Phoenix Suns. Although Gasol says Game 5 on Thursday night is “a must-win for us,” the champions’ California cool shows few signs of cracking, beyond Bryant’s grumbling about missed defensive assignments. After surviving a near-identical jam in last season’s conference finals against Denver, the Lakers came away with a confidence they can rise to any occasion—even a best-two-of-three series against a surging, shot-making opponent with rising confidence of its own. “There’s absolutely no doubt that we love this,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said Wednesday, not sounding much like a coach planning to fill out retirement papers next month. “This is what champions are made of. If you have the best teams in the West going up against each other, it should come down to a challenge like this. … This is what basketball at this level is. Like I told them, ‘If you can’t meet this challenge, then why go to the finals?”’ The Lakers have been in this situation three previous times over the past two playoffs: a series tied at 2, with Game 5 at home. Los Angeles won each time, beating Houston and the Nuggets last season before trouncing Oklahoma City last month in the first round. Overall, they’ve won Game 5 seven straight times at home. Yet the Suns hold every smidgen of momentum heading back to Staples Center after winning the last two games with a gimmicky zone defense, impressive bench play and another phenomenal exhibition of offense. Los Angeles’ 58 percent shooting in its first two victories masked its full series of ineffective defense so far: Los Angeles has yielded 113 points per game, and Phoenix has shaken off a brief spell of outside shooting problems. At least the Lakers are back home, where they haven’t lost in seven playoff games this spring. “The momentum we have, the confidence we have now, is definitely going to help us going to L.A.,” said Suns forward Amare Stoudemire, who shook off two mediocre games at Staples Center with big efforts in Phoenix. “We definitely can win there. It’s just a matter of us implementing our will.” Will was a popular topic in El Segundo as well, with Bryant declaring that most of the Lakers’ problems are mental lapses on execution and assignments. After nearly posting a triple-double in Game 4, Bryant lamented Los Angeles’ inability to stick to its assignments when the Suns repeatedly ran their pick-and-roll, drive-and-dish offense. “My message is offensively, we’re going to score enough points,” Bryant said. “Defensively, we’ve got to do a much better job. That’s my message. We’ve got to grind, do a better job staying in front of them.” The Lakers uniformly downplayed the importance of Phoenix’s zone defense, a 2-3 scheme that puts defenders on both sides of Los Angeles’ post players. The Lakers’ shooting decreased sharply in Phoenix, but Jackson snorted at the idea he’s being outmaneuvered, noting his club still scored 107.5 points per game in Arizona. “They challenge you in a lot of ways that we have to adjust to,” Gasol said. “It’s mostly stuff we know about. It’s about being alert all the time.” Suns coach Alvin Gentry will have to miss his son’s elementary school graduation on Thursday night after his club avoided the sweep that seemed highly possible after its first two losses in Los Angeles. Gentry persuaded his players to stick with his simple defensive scheme in the past two games. The Suns allowed Bryant to work his usual offensive magic, but forced the Lakers’ low-post scorers to work extra hard for shots—or to give up the ball to the Lakers’ rather ordinary perimeter shooters, including Derek Fisher(notes), Ron Artest(notes) and Shannon Brown(notes). “We want to stop everyone, but sometimes you just can’t stop Kobe,” Suns guard Steve Nash(notes) said of Bryant, who’s averaging 28.9 points per game in the playoffs. “So we can’t get discouraged. He’s playing as well as maybe he’s ever played right now. He may continue to do that. We’ve proven we can win if he plays great, but we’ve got to be really solid. We’ve got to be tough. We’ve got to win all the little battles, because they do have some matchups and talent that we don’t have.” Jackson echoed Nash’s concerns about the little things, citing a few offensive rebounds the Lakers failed to secure in the first quarter of Game 4. Those mistakes eventually snowballed into team-wide problems with execution, even after the Lakers took care of almost every detail in the first two games while extending their playoff winning streak to eight games. “We understood that it was going to be hard,” Gasol said. “The first two results we obtained gave us a good feeling, but we knew the Suns were going to bounce back, and they have.” Bryant and center Andrew Bynum(notes) didn’t appear to practice with the Lakers on Wednesday, although Jackson didn’t say for sure. Bynum is playing on an injured right knee that will require surgery, while Bryant simply takes advantage of every chance to rest his accumulated injuries. Source: Y! Sports
Defending the Suns is a difficult task. Before this series started we talked about the nuances of the Suns offensive sets and how the variations of their P&R give teams fits. There’s a reason this team was the top ranked offense in the league all season (both in points per game and efficiency) – they’re damn good on that side of the ball. And while the Lakers had mild success slowing the Suns’ attack in the first two games of this series, whatever hurdles the Lakers were presenting are now gone. In games 3 & 4 the Suns blitzed the Lakers defense and we’re now at the point where the Lakers need to get back to their defensive principles to recapture their ability to be more than just a minor speed bump on the Suns’ path to 115+ points a game. Below are 5 defensive techniques that the Lakers need to get back to on the defensive side of the ball: 1). Create the proper angles when defending the P&R. In the first two games the Lakers did a good job at simultaneously fighting over screens and hedging and recovering to the roll man. Understand that when Nash is the ball handler in the P&R, his top priority is to set up one of his teammates. So, the Lakers guards need to get back to getting over the top of the screen while the big men show on the ball handler in a way that discourages penetration while also limiting the passing angle to the big men. This is easier said than done, but if the Lakers can’t at least slow down the decision making process of the ball handler, they’ll continue to get beat on this action. In order to accomplish this, every Laker defender must have active feet and hands; they must have fluidity of movement to rotate and recover while getting their hands into passing lanes forcing the ball handler to hold the ball or getting deflections when the pass is made. The Lakers accomplished this reasonably well in the first two games and they need to get back to doing it in game 5 and beyond. 2). Containing dribble penetration. Again, this is easier said than done. Plus, this is one facet of the Lakers defense that has been an issue for multiple seasons running. However, besides the P&R, the entirety of the Suns offense is predicated off of dribble penetration into the paint. Whether it’s Amar’e, Dragic, Barbosa, or Nash the Suns want to drive the ball and either get all the way to the hoop for a layup/dunk or they want to collapse the defense to kick the ball out to open shooters. If the Lakers are going to slow down the dribble penetration, they need to do one of the two things. First is to be much better defensively while closely guarding ball handlers on the perimeter – which if you’ve followed the Lakers for the past several seasons isn’t that realistic. Second, and a better strategy, is to lay off the ball handler and turn them into jump shooters. This may sound counter intuitive because the Suns boast one of the better jump shooting teams in the league. However, besides Nash and Hill (and to a lesser extent Barbosa and Dragic) the Suns aren’t a team that is comfortable pulling up for jump shots off the dribble. So, by giving the ball handler space, you invite them to shoot pull up jumpers while at the same time limiting their driving lanes. How many times did Farmar or Brown give up drives to Dragic and Barbosa? How many baskets did those drives create? How many times did Amar’e bull his way to the hoop and make shots right at the rim? These are the plays the Lakers need to limit and it starts with either playing much better defense on the ball handler, or inviting them to take the pull up jumper instead of penetrating. 3). Remember transition defense principles. This is pretty straight forward as the Lakers need to understand that when in transition, the Suns players run to the three point line. In game 4, the Lakers often got caught out of position in transition defense by recovering to the paint when the ball was getting pushed at them. This led to shooters being left wide open behind the three point arc. In that 9 point burst that gave the Suns their lead (that they would not relinquish) in the 4th quarter, the Suns got two 3 point baskets just because the Lakers lost their men in transition and recovered to the paint. Needless to say, those baskets changed the tenor of the game and created a hole the Lakers never dug themselves out of. If the Lakers are going to defend the Suns effectively, they need to limit their transition points and that means marking shooters that run to the wing and wait for Nash, Dragic, and Barbosa to set them up after pushing the ball up court. The Lakers showed that discipline in games 1 & 2. They need to regain it in game 5. 4). Rebound at the defensive end. Whether or not the 18 offensive rebounds the Lakers surrendered in game 4 were an anomaly, that number is entirely too high and can’t be repeated. The Suns are too elite of an offensive team to give extra possessions and nothing good can come from the Lakers giving the Suns second chances to score the ball. In order to slow down the Suns on the offensive glass it’s going to take a team effort. Not only do the Lakers bigs need to rebound better than they did in game 4, but the Lakers guards/wings need to close down the FT line and not allow the long rebounds from the Suns’ missed jumpers to be grabbed by the opposition. This simply comes down to boxing out and hustling to the ball. If the Lakers want the ball, they have to go and get it. They can’t just stand around and hope it bounces to them. All of the previous points require focus and effort, but none more so than rebounding. The Lakers just need to put in the work. 5). Practice good shot selection. I know I said that these are defensive principles that need to be improved upon, but the Lakers shot selection is too intertwined with their struggles on defense to be ignored. In the past two games the Lakers have shot 60 three pointers and only made 18 (30%). That’s entirely too many attempts and too many misses that fuel the Suns transition offense. I understand that the high number of 3’s attempted are tied into the Suns’ zone defense, and that any talk about shot selection needs to also discuss how the Lakers can crack the Suns’ zone. But, ultimately, it’s not so much what the Lakers need to do to beat the Suns zone but ultimately the types of shots that the Lakers take that matter. The Lakers are scoring the ball well enough, but the fact that they’re taking and missing so many long jump shots is impacting their ability to effectively transition from offense to defense and thus doesn’t allow them to set up their defensive formations. That loss of defensive integrity is allowing the Suns to get into the paint too easily which then leads to over helping, which results in too many wide open shots by the Suns. So, the Lakers need to show more patience on offense and execute better if they hope to help their defensive efforts. In the end, as Kobe said after game 4, “We lost the game because our defense sucked.” So if the Lakers are going to get back to their winning ways, they need to tighten up the D. It’s an old cliché, but defense wins championships and the Lakers haven’t been playing enough of it lately to advance for the chance to play for that trophy. Here’s hoping that when the Lakers return back home they rediscover some of the defense that they didn’t bring with them to Phoenix. Source: FB&G
He was definitely hacked. They showed it clearly on the replay. Ron Artest mentioned also in the post game interview and that's how he knew the shot was going to be really short.
It happens on the playground courts too. Bigger guys always get hacked more by smaller guys and it goes unnoticed, but when a big guy fouls a small guy you see the body fly.
