Los Angeles Lakers: Defensive Problems Arising?

Care to play some true or false on this beautiful day?

True or false:  It’s the preseason.  These eight games don’t count towards anything, for any team. 

True.

Okay, true or false:  In any sense — pickup game or preseason event included — you are totally content with losing by 41 points.

False.  Vehemently false.

The Los Angeles Lakers haven’t fooled us this preseason, and we’re only three games into the eight-game schedule.  For the most part, it’s been acceptable for the team, especially since they started out the week with a 1-1 record.  Their one win was by downing a team widely deemed as a superior one, the Denver Nuggets.  Their loss was to a top four Western Conference unit, in many people’s eyes, the Golden State Warriors.

After splitting the two games, Los Angeles could actually evaluate where they were on both ends of the court, and prepare for their third game.  They’ve had to travel around the state of California, playing in San Diego, Hollywood, and then Ontario, which is 35 miles east of Los Angeles.

Thus, on Sunday, their third game (in Ontario) was ultimately a home game, since it wasn’t much of a travel for the guys.  You could draw that conclusion from the amount of crowd noise every time those Lakers did something exciting, or halfway right.

Which means, you didn’t hear the crowd often.

The suspects, again, would be Golden State.  New head coach Steve Kerr has the Warriors blazing early on, as they’re a perfect 3-0, with an average point differential of +24.7.  In addition, all three of their wins have basically come on the road.

They didn’t shy away from harming the Lakers once more, and their large point differential likely has something to do with the 41-point mauling they recently put on Los Angeles.

During the first quarter, nothing was going smoothly for Byron Scott’s Lakers.  You can go ahead and mark it down … whenever your opponent shoots 71.4 percent from the floor in the opening 12 minutes, and you only shoot 14.8 percent, it’s going to take more than a miracle to avenge the beating and win the game.

Nonetheless, it was a bloody, one-sided army brawl from the beginning.  Stephen Curry was the armed shooter, both figuratively and literally.  He scored the first 10 points for the Warriors, all on ridiculous attempts that seemed to fall through the net.  When you take into account that Curry is erasing the “arguably” off the phrase “greatest shooter of all-time,” those unbelievable shots seem to hit normalcy.

Coming up the court, in the middle of a series of dribbles, it doesn’t matter.  Curry eats you alive, with no space to even breathe.  At one point during the first two minutes, Carlos Boozer fell as the embarrassing victim.  Closing out to the 3-point line as Curry pushed the ball in transition, the only space Boozer gave him was enough to taste the sweat from his bald head.  Bang, as if the ex-Bull had a chance affecting his shot.

Curry topped the magical run off with a 4-point play, as he fell to the ground with swagger running through his body.  Seriously, you could see him wiggle around, dancing to the beat of the swish.

By the end of the first alone, Golden State had accelerated its lead to 39-13, with Kobe Bryant having a tough night right off the bat.  Only scoring on 1-of-9 field goals, Bryant could only get one thing to go for him:  his step-back, one-dribble jumper from the right wing.  Other than that, his post moves were getting heavily doubled, and Golden State was doing a superb job staying home on the rest of the outside shooters.  When they would double Bryant, they either forced a turnover, or the helper would quickly recover on his man by the time Bryant had delivered the pass.

Offensively, it wasn’t close to Los Angeles’ expectations.  Wayne Ellington was the only guard that could get a steady rhythm, other than veteran guard, Ronnie Price.  Of course, it was Price who decided it was a good idea to use his loose shoe as a defensive weapon.  When his shoe came off, he didn’t throw it towards the bench, or even attempt to put it back on.  Instead, he launched it at Andre Iguodala, the ball-handler in a fastbreak.

If I’m Byron Scott, I’m looking attentively at Price, laughing until I cry, and then cutting him from the team immediately.  To be fair, Price getting cut wouldn’t have everything to do with being foolish on the court, but because he wouldn’t have much of a role at all in the backcourt depth.

Keeping a shooter of Ellington’s caliber would be necessary, and then he’d go along with Jeremy Lin, Jordan Clarkson, and Xavier Henry.  When Nick Young returns from the broken thumb (sometime at the end of November), it would just get even more crowded.  And, it makes more sense grooming the young second-round pick, Clarkson, over giving 10-15 minutes to the 31-year-old Price.  Yes, he’s still quick as a bullet at his age, but too many people already see eminent qualities in Clarkson.  Develop the young blood.

Defensively, there’s a squabble brewing after the 116-75 loss to Golden State.

Many are on board with the notion of “there’s nothing you can honestly do about the best 3-point shooters finding their primary offense.”

Part of that is true, especially when you’re up against the top backcourt in the game, with Curry and Klay Thompson.  Both combined for 41 points, on 8-of-15 3-pointers.  It’s just what they do, exactly similar to LaMarcus Aldridge and his mid-range attack.  It’s what he does at a higher rate than any other power forward out there, and he’s going to find success from his spot.  More than likely, it’s going to be rather efficient if he’s getting those looks against sub-par defenders, too.

The same goes for Curry and Thompson.  Playing in the Western Conference, they’ve seen any possible defense thrown at them.

Still, they managed to combine for 484-of-1,150 outside shots last season, which was 42.1 percent effective.  On a lower amount of attempts, that’s still impressive.  On 1,150 attempts, 42 percent is impious.  It doesn’t belong on Earth, as if those two are aliens.

Even against the top three teams in Defensive Rating last season (Indiana, Chicago, San Antonio), the duo shot 34-of-86 from beyond the arc.  That’s still 39.5 percent combined, which is exactly where you would like a dynamic backcourt to be, individually.

There was nothing the Lakers could do about a shooting barrage, and they actually limited the other Golden State members.  Outside of Curry and Thompson, the Lakers kept the Warriors to 5-of-18 from the perimeter, which was only 27.8 percent.

It was still the rim-protection that haunted the Lakers.

Kerr still has this team pounding the rock inside as well, with Golden State out-scoring the Lakers in the paint, 36 to 24.  The first meeting between the two saw both teams equal in that aspect, 44 to 44.  Against Denver last week was the only time Los Angeles out-scored their opponent in the paint.

Despite what others choose to believe, Carlos Boozer still isn’t the rim protector they hoped to obtain in free agency.  There actually wasn’t many of those available in free agency.  The main targets Mitch Kupchak wanted were Carmelo Anthony — a lazy defender at times — and LeBron James.  James would’ve changed the entire dimension of the Lakers’ defensive schemes, but that was only a pipe-dream.

The main issue Los Angeles faces this season is that their two best defensive bigs, Jordan Hill and Ed Davis, are incredibly small for their jobs.  By no means are they too small in terms of their muscle tone or athletic build, but they don’t have the height to contend with top frontcourts across the league.

At 6-10, Hill is as aggressive as it gets down low, and it’s still not a tough task to score against him.  Davis, who’s also 6-10 and weighs just five pounds more, loves to crash the boards with intensity and he makes up for the offensive rebounding problem Los Angeles had last year.  The Lakers ranked 27th overall offensive boards per game, collecting just 9.1 per night.  They also allowed the most defensive rebounds per game, ranking 30th at 36.0 per game.  I’d bet my cash that it won’t happen that way again.

Although they’re active 110 percent of the time, size matters in the NBA.  It may not matter in other aspects of life … but this is a big boy’s league.  And you can take that literally.

Disgusted by the 118 points per game they gave up to Golden State in the two losses, Scott was asked of what they’ll work extensively on in this week’s practices.

“Defense, defense, defense,” Scott said.

But, he also hit the reality button, and pounded it pretty hard.

“Those guys [Golden State] have been together for a few years, we’ve been together for a few weeks,” Scott added.  “I thought our effort was better.  I think, again, when they start making shots early we get a little discombobulated.”

For the Lakers, it’s not totally down the drain … yet.  It’s still mid-October, and the preseason has five games remaining.  Too often, we see people overeating and already believing what they see during the preseason.  It’s still uncertain if Los Angeles is going to be a middle-of-the-road team, or a bottom-feeder.  You can’t use the observations from three preseason games and already claim they’re going to be horrific, or great.  These games are mainly try-outs and high-speed practices for the younger guys on the roster, and used by superstars to erase any rust that’s there from the summer.

Are there defensive concerns?  Yes, because there’s nobody near the paint that can hold their own.  None of the Los Angeles bigs have developed a reputation for being potent stoppers, and it’s going to take a total team effort.

It takes perfect rotations, discipline, and top-notch pick-and-roll defense in the West.  Last season, there was no better pick-and-roll defending team than the Lakers, but the personnel has changed on the roster.

They’re just lucky they now have a coach that’s not ignoring it.  If this was one year ago today, the coach of the purple and gold wouldn’t be mentioning the “D” word.

**All statistical support credited to ESPN.com & Basketball-Reference**

Shane Young is an NBA credentialed writer for 8 Points, 9 Seconds and HoopsHabit.com. For all Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers, or general NBA coverage, follow @YoungNBA and @HoopsHabit on Twitter.