The San Antonio Spurs discovered a nifty trick in the second half of their comeback 126-102 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday. It turns out that all it takes to obliterate the NBA's No. 24 ranked defense is to draw its only real rim-protector away from the rim.
The concept was simple. Anthony Davis would often start possessions further away from the basket than usual because he was guarding Victor Wembanyama, who, despite his size, scores the bulk of his points on the perimeter. If that immediately gave them a path to the lane? Great, they took it. If they needed to work for it, the Spurs would use screens to force a Davis switch onto a smaller player. The end result was the same either way. Once the basket was unprotected, they attacked.
For the game, the Spurs outscored the Lakers 66-40 in the paint. That would be a startling differential for just about any team, but it's especially notable for the Davis-LeBron James Lakers. When they won the championship in 2020, they outscored opponents, on average, by seven points per game in the paint. The Lakers outscored their opponents in the paint in four of Davis' first five seasons in Los Angeles, and the lone exception came during the 2021-22 campaign in which he played just 40 games. Ownership of the paint has been this team's identity since conception.
But games like Monday's were part of a startling trend. The Lakers allow the third-most points in the paint this season and are outscored by an average of more than three points per game there. They still have Davis, and unlike in 2022, he's healthy, having played in all but two Laker games this season. There isn't much evidence supporting significant decline on his part. While he isn't quite as good on the perimeter as he used to be, his block rate is nearly identical to where it was a year ago and most defensive metrics still paint him as a significant positive. Could he be better? Sure, but the supporting cast is where most of these problems are arising.
The Lakers, outside of Davis, just aren't very big anymore. There are the obvious smaller guards like Austin Reaves and Gabe Vincent, of course, but even the players who are listed as taller don't play like it. Max Christie (6-foot-5) is all length at this point, not nearly strong enough to hold up in the paint. Dalton Knecht (6-foot-6) is similarly unimposing. James (6-foot-9) is 40 and has only so much energy to exert defensively. Rui Hachimura (6-foot-8) is almost invisible defensively, and he isn't much better as a rebounder. Despite his height and the strength he uses to good effect offensively, he has never rebounded well for his position, and he has posted career-low 8.9% rebound rates over the past two seasons, his only two full years with the Lakers.
Rebounding is far from just a Hachimura problem. It was actually the second major driver of San Antonio's "get Davis away from the basket" strategy. They knew that they'd be able to pull in the shots they missed and score on their second chances.
Predictably, a team that's struggling at the rim is also struggling to pull in rebounds. The Lakers rank 25th in rebounding rate, and that isn't just happening when Davis rests. In many of these areas, the Lakers really aren't all that different with or without their star center. Their defensive rating dips only half of a point per 100 possessions when he rests. The decline in rebounding rate is more drastic, but even during the Davis minutes, the Lakers still rebound at below a league-average rate. This isn't a lineup problem. It's a roster problem.
Think of all of the rankings we've covered in this space: 24th in overall defense, 28th in paint defense, 25th in rebounding. For a team to be competitive with that statistical profile, you'd expect them to make up for those interior issues with great shooting. The Lakers rank 28th in 3-point attempts and 20th in 3-point percentage. They're not making up for this with elite ball- or player-movement either: they're 17th in potential assists and 15th in points created off of assists. While NBA.com's tracking data on player movement should be taken with a grain of salt, only Celtics and Clippers players move slower on average than the Lakers do on offense. They don't give the ball away often, but they rank 22nd in turnovers generated defensively. The only area in which this team thrives revolves around whistles. The Lakers get to the line and they don't foul on the other end.
In the past, that, and the two superhumans remaining from the 2020 championship team, were enough. But the deeper the Lakers get into this season, the clearer it becomes that as good as James and Davis still are, they're closer to mortal than they've ever been. While most of the motivation for getting Davis away from the basket revolved around a desire to punish other Laker defenders, the Spurs also likely realized that, at 31 and with a lengthy history of injuries to his name, he isn't quite the perimeter defender he used to be. How often do you remember a guard getting him on a switch, outracing him to the basket and dunking with the sort of authority Devin Vassell did with 2:43 remaining in the third quarter?
Plays like that, even against Davis, say more about the player executing than the one victimized. But plays like the one that came with 8:05 remaining in the third quarter? Those are on the defenders. Wembanyama back-screens Christie off of Chris Paul. Davis doesn't pick him up. James is in position to help at the basket... but stands still. Paul scores two of the easiest points of his season.
Miscommunications happen. James, at 40, has to make split-second decisions about how much to exert himself on a given play in order to maximize what his aging body still has left. The Lakers could get by with occasional plays like this if everything else was going well. In truth, plays like this have become startlingly common. The Lakers can afford James taking plays off. They can't afford it if everyone does so. But effort has been inconsistent all season. The talent is no longer strong enough to accommodate that, and there doesn't seem to be anyone in the locker room setting the sort of hustle-culture needed to change it.
Dorian Finney-Smith said it best after the game, even if it wasn't quite what he meant. "We didn't execute the game plan like we were supposed to," he told reporters. "But the coaches, they gave us the right answers to the test. We just ain't use the study guide." Is there any amount of studying a middle-schooler could do to pass the bar exam? Sometimes the material is just too much for the test-taker.
And that's where the Lakers are right now. They're relying on a formula that their best players may no longer be able to support. They're stuck with role players with extremely exploitable flaws. They've developed bad habits that they lack the energy to break out of. They are, in short, a mediocre team.
There are plenty of mediocre teams in the NBA. The Lakers are just rarely comfortable being one of them. Yet that is probably where they're staying as the James-Davis core rides out its final days (or, potentially, years). The roster is too far away to plausibly trade its way into the championship conversation, and trying would be irresponsible management of the limited assets this team still has at its disposal. The loss to San Antonio, in a vacuum, is only a single game, and one that the Lakers surely played with heavy hearts based on what is happening in Los Angeles right now. But this wasn't just one game. It was emblematic of problems this team has had all season long, and those problems are just too big for the Lakers to solve in time for any sort of meaningful playoff run this season.