Los Angeles Lakers: Expect small-ball and youthful bigs with Brook Lopez out
With Brook Lopez due to miss at least three weeks with a right ankle injury, the Los Angeles Lakers will turn to their youth and small-ball to hold the fort down until he returns.
Coming into the 2017-18 NBA season, the Los Angeles Lakers rostered a crowded frontcourt that presented limited opportunities for their young bigs. Head coach Luke Walton settled on a starting duo of Larry Nance Jr. and Brook Lopez, with Julius Randle and Kyle Kuzma garnering most of the playing time coming off the bench.
Brook Lopez will have his right ankle reevaluated in three weeks after spraining it Dec. 18 against the Golden State Warriors. His absence comes at a brutal part of the Lakers schedule.
The former Brooklyn Nets center is averaging career lows in scoring (12.8 points per game), minutes (22.4 per game) and field goal percentage (44.4 percent), and near career lows in field goal attempts (10.9 per game) and rebounds (4.3 per game).
The production hasn’t been great, but Lopez is one of the lone veterans to get playing time on this team and is their best back-to-the-basket player, despite transitioning to a more perimeter-based big in recent seasons with almost 40 percent of his shots being from the 3-point line this season. He will be missed at times, but this injury does present coach Walton an opportunity to downsize his lineups and give the young bigs playing time.
The obvious benefactors are second-year center Ivica Zubac, who appears scarcely in garbage time and rookie Thomas Bryant, who has yet to log a minute this season. I’ve talked about both of these bigs’ inabilities to find sufficient playing time with the Lakers this season in separate articles, and their chances may have come earlier than expected with Lopez’s injury coming before the Lakers have turned fully to their youth.
People are interested to see how Zubac and Bryant play in the NBA. Zubac started some games down the stretch last season, becoming a crowd favorite while displaying a consistent ability to score around the paint.
Bryant fits more of the modern NBA with a 3-point shot and ability to finish effectively when rolling to the rim after screens. Their chances will likely remain limited if the Lakers opt for constant small-ball, however — something the Lakers chose to do by not playing a true center after Lopez exited the Warriors game in the second quarter.
One of the main reasons Zubac and Bryant haven’t seen much of the court is how well the trio of Nance, Randle and Kuzma have played this season. They are also much more capable of handling the responsibilities of modern big men: hang with smaller players on defense, spread the floor and run in transition. There are only so many minutes to go around for big men these days.
The Lakers fall into this category as well, and rarely stray from their four-man frontcourt rotation. When Nance missed four weeks, this was shrunk to a three-man frontcourt, with Brandon Ingram and Corey Brewer moving up a position. Granted, the starting center wasn’t missing like this time around, but this would give coach Walton some chances to play ultra-small ball and try Kuzma or Ingram at the 5.
I don’t expect them to stick with just Nance, Randle and Kuzma in this time period, and would anticipate seeing veteran Andrew Bogut play more minutes. The combination of Bogut, Bryant and Zubac should be enough to bridge the gap for Lopez’s 22.4 minutes if Walton wants to go this route. They may not play the full 22 minutes, but I’m interested to see how many minutes he’ll place upon Nance, Randle and Kuzma.
Next: 2017-18 Week 10 NBA Power Rankings
Brook Lopez will be missed for the three weeks (at least) of games he sits out, but this presents an opportunity for younger players to stake their claim for increased playing time. Combine this with the small lineups coach Walton will certainly deploy and it will be an intriguing couple weeks of basketball for this team.