If it weren’t for the franchise’s legendary status and the return of Kobe Bryant, the team would be lucky to have an appearance on national TV and they’d be buried under other headlines. The Lakers are an uncomfortable marriage of a rebuilding program and a flagship for their aging superstar. This is no disrespect toward Kobe or the franchise, but this is an awkward transition period and it won’t be pretty.
2014 in review
A few events set up a disappointing 2014. They disparaged their marquee free agent center and were somehow surprised he left, leaving a hole in the frontcourt and disrupting their future. This was after a nightmare season for a supposed Dream Team, who barely made the playoffs, which was topped off by an Achilles injury to Kobe. Despite the devastating effects of the injury, fans and some analysts expected Kobe, a workout warrior, to come back at near full strength in time for the season. Unfortunately, the concerns about his age and the severity of the injury were well-founded: he lasted six games before suffering a knee injury, and he couldn’t properly recover from it before the end of the season. Nash wasn’t much better with a mere 313 minutes played, and Pau was left as the lone all-star veteran competing with a host of lower tier talent and miscellaneous parts.
Arguably, the Lakers were better off with Kobe injured so they’d be forced into a rebuild instead of hanging onto a misguided dream of being a contender. Pau was finally let go in the off-season, and the Lakers visited the lottery for the first time in a while. Their two previous lottery picks were years ago — Bynum in 2005 and Eddie Jones in 1994 — but 7th was the highest LAL has picked since James Worthy in 1982. The Lakers have traditionally relied on plucking stars from other franchises, as even Bryant himself was pried away from Charlotte in a trade, but they’ll have to resort to small market means of building through the draft for now.
Changes
Exit: Jodie Meeks, Pau Gasol, Kendall Marshall, Jordan Farmar, Steve Blake, Shawne Williams, Chris Kaman, Kent Bazemore, MarShon Brooks, Manny Harris, Elias Harris.
Enter: Jeremy Lin, Carlos Boozer, Ed Davis, Julius Randle, Wayne Ellington, Ronnie Price, Jordan Clarkson.
What’s important about these exit/enter lists is that you see some balance once you factor in Kobe. While a healthier Kobe and Lin are a definite boost, losing Meeks, Pau, and the stable of point guards like Marshall will hurt. Kobe’s entering his late 30’s and the possibility of another injury isn’t remote. A group headlined by Lin and Boozer isn’t one that can be called an infusion of talent, and if you’re relying on a rookie to generate wins you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But I suppose the greatest disappointment is that the Lakers will no longer have Chris Kaman draped over the bench like it’s a Viking funeral.
They’ve also brought in a new coach, Byron Scott, to replace the heavily criticized Mike D’Antoni. The media and fans were harsh on D’Antoni for supposedly relying on his system too much, but that team as constructed wasn’t going to challenge for anything. Scott’s now a veteran coach, and given his track record he’s not the type of guy who can turn around a team.
Player spotlight
If there’s a spirit animal of the current Lakers, it’s gotta be Nick Young: he’s brash, absurdly confident, thinks of himself like a superstar despite all evidence to the contrary, cares little about defense, and is older than you’d imagine. He’s an unabashed gunner on a team with Kobe Bryant, like some sort of mutated shadow of Kobe, a caricature.
For those who are not intimately familiar with Nick Young, that description is not really an exaggeration. From the bar plot below, he has a usage rate in the 90th percentile, which is uncommon for non-stars. Of the 22 players last season with a usage rate of Young’s or higher, only 6 have never been to an all-star game. You can see how jump-shot happy he is, ranking high in three-point, catch-and-shoot, and pull-up attempts. He also had an above average rate of free-throws and drives. What’s telling is that he did all that with an average amount of touches in the half-court and an assist rate closer to a power forward than a high-scoring wing.
However, he’s actually quite efficient with an above average true-shooting percentage and a tiny turnover rate (I imagine this is partly because he shoots because he has a chance to cough the ball up). But this could be a one-year blip. He’s nearing 30 and hit a career high by a fair amount — his career average is 54%, and his previous career high was still below league average.
His defensive stats are pretty ugly — he’s below-average across the board, and a slightly below-average foul rate isn’t exactly a good sign as the Lakers didn’t have him cover top scorers and wing players have low foul rates (big men lead that category). Any benefits you receive from his offense are negated by his defense, which is what you see with all-in-one metrics like ESPN’s RPM or my own ASPM.
Via the shotchart from Nylon Calculus, Young has a tendency to take jump shots from 16 to 25 feet or finish at the rim. He’s not particularly accurate, however, except from a couple spots; his efficiency is derived from the high number of three-point attempts. If you play around with his shotchart in previous seasons you see the same general pattern with his hot-spots moving around: he shoots in two large rings everywhere outside the arc, then inside around 1 foot, and he’s poor to average at converting at the rim.
In watching him play, you’ll see a lot of pull-up jumpers and fadeaways with a high arc when he’s not shooting three’s from every angle. The video set from a Toronto game is a good microcosm (link is also here.) You can see his flair and his wildness in the fifth to last video in what might be one of the worst shot attempts in modern history (and to finish it off, he played terrible defense right afterwards).
But if you ignore all the misses, he’s an exciting scorer. There’s a reason why he’s so popular now because his lack of success, and even Kobe can be impressed (video link is also here).
His defensive problems can’t be ignored though. In the second to last clip here, you can see his try to facemask LeBron 35 feet from the basket. Oddly enough, it didn’t work, and LeBron drives to the basket for a layup around Young. He offers little resistance from anyone: in the fourth video here, DeRozan drives past him easily 30 feet from the rim. DeRozan passes out, but Young is inattentive and lets DeRozan immediately catch a pass four feet from the basket, and he doesn’t miss this time.
Nick Young’s one of the most popular players right now, and he’s the antithesis of San Antonio’s philosophy, that type of smart, fundamentally-sound basketball. He’ll fire up long jumpers from anywhere and doesn’t pass, and while his efficiency is a positive, mostly given his low turnover rate, his defense counteracts that offense. He’s an instant scorer and one who can be useful off the bench, like a Jamaal Crawford without the ballhandling, and it’s no surprise he was involved in the highest scoring game of 2014.
2015 projected
In NBA articles written by those within the analytics movement, a popular term is one describing a player like a variable. Kobe Bryant, I imagine, is the variable on the Lakers for most people, but it’s accurate here. In most cases, we know how good a player will be, and surprises arise from young players or guys who are given their first big role. But Kobe in 2015, his value on court, is a variable. Trying to predict their season is like trying to hit a moving target.
For most players, you estimate their value mainly from how they did the previous season for the vast majority of methods people use. But this is tricky with established players who suffered major injuries. Will he be the same as he was pre-injury? Or did his limited time the previous season mean something? Kobe did not look comfortable out there, and although he only played six games, a low shooting-percentage and a high rate of turnovers are both troubling.
What I did was project his ratings from 2013 using an aging curve, completely ignoring 2014 — I’m not sure how wise this will turn out to be, but my ratings for him in 2013 weren’t superb anyway thanks for a low defensive score. A vintage Kobe season would push them a bit higher (though still far from the playoffs), but I don’t know how many people understand how long it’s been since he was that kind of player.
Elsewhere, it’s a grab-bag collection of mid-level talent. There’s a bit of a logjam at forward. They drafted a power forward, but still brought in Carlos Boozer from an amnesty auction and signed Ed Davis. They already have Jordan Hill, who can play PF but will log most of his time at C, and the young Ryan Kelly, who showed promise as as stretch 4. They also have Wesley Johnson at small forward with Xavier Henry, a young guy who will want more minutes, and Nick Young, who played SF for them last season. To find time for everyone, they’d need to push a smaller guy to center like Boozer.
Julius Randle, however, is too small to man the middle. As I covered during the last draft, Randle is in the lower quartile for power forwards with respect to his size. But Millsap isn’t the proper antecedent, as most undersized power forwards who make it have long arms. He has a standing reach of 8.8 feet and a wingspan of 7 feet even, which sounds more like a small forward than a power forward. But given his poor jump shot, he’ll have to stay in the frontcourt. The glass half-full view is that he’ll be the next Carl Landry or Leon Powe.
Jeremy Lin, after bouncing around even since his Lin-sanity breakout performance, has probably found a suitable habitat. The Lakers aren’t good, but at least he’ll be heavily watched. His capable defense will also be important because they were burned so much last year from opposing point guards. In looking at the top ten games from every point guard who made either the all-star roster or the all-NBA team, over a quarter of them were against LAL (according to game score.) If you wanted to set a season high, you looked forward to seeing the Lakers.
The other story will be tracking the sad demise of Steve Nash, who’s trying to end things on his own terms with one more season. He’s a health fanatic, but he’ll be playing in his 40’s and he has a history of back problems. He’s had an interesting career, one that parallels several important developments. He helped usher in a faster and more pleasing offensive game. He won MVPs despite gaudy scoring stats and at the time the advanced stats analysts like Hollinger called him overrated, and cited Billups as a guy with a similar PER and better defense along with how valuable Marion and Stoudemire were. But that was during an early period in basketball analysis, and today he’s praised by the same set of people for his impressively high plus/minus numbers. He’ll retire in the era of SportVU, precise shot charts, video tracking, and Orwellian health tracking. We didn’t know exactly what we were seeing at the time, but we’ve come to appreciate it: one of the greatest offensive players ever.
Edit: Unfortunately, Nash is out for the season with a back injury, but we can still reflect on what he means.
Summary
For the Lakers, they’ll be playing in the shadows of their past where Kobe has faded from his former glory as he climbs a career points leaderboard led by a famous Laker, and the fans dream of previous championships and big name superstar acquisitions. That won’t be this season. But at least they’ll get to watch Nick Young, a personification of Lakers pride trapped in mediocrity, hoisting shots with the simple joy of being able to take them.
(SBNation)
Congrats, Lakers, the shot doesn’t have to go in or out, and you can celebrate either way: welcome to another lottery year.
Wins: 26
Losses: 56
Conference rank: 14th (tied)
League offense rank: 24th
League defense rank: 26th
Edited 10/27/2014
