LA's Lost Season?

The Lakers could turn things around. They could reasonably string together a 15-3 stretch and be right back in the thick of the playoff race and perhaps the "championship contender" conversation that they were featured heavily in during the offseason.

That very well could happen.

But the reality is, with each additional loss, the absolute certainty of the playoffs evaporates into the ether. Let’s not even talk about a championship this year.

The Lakers stink—and moral victories, while offering a glimmer of hope, are irrelevant to this particular squad. This isn’t the Bobcats. This isn’t the Orlando Magic.

Only a month ago, I wrote how Mike D’Antoni was the right man for the job because he was hungrier than Phil Jackson and because Jim Buss wanted him.

Can I recant that proclamation? Because D’Antoni thus far, has not been hungry, has not been a winner, has  not even played his role as prophet of the Seven Seconds or Less religion that he brought to the NBA—a religion he blindly follows no matter how dark and desolate his situation becomes.

What he has been is stubborn. That same unflinching belief in his system is why the Lakers have struggled. As much as Kobe Bryant believes that no one can beat him in a game of one-on-one, that’s how much D’Antoni believes that his offense will ultimately triumph over defense.

In a perfect world, that is certainly the case—especially for any sport that requires points to win. But, just like how communism doesn’t work when put into real practice, the same can be said about D’Antoni’s religion.

D’Antoni’s inability or complete disinterest or utter failing to give this Lakers team a defensive scheme that they can all hang their hats on as a collective unit has been his biggest failing.

Offense is easy.

Even for offensively-challenged players like Jason and Jarron Collins.

Jacking up shots, especially shots generated by Steve Nash, is not difficult—even if there are a bunch of shot happy guys on the court who all say they need the ball to be effective.

What’s hard about basketball?

Defense.

Defense takes commitment. It requires trust. It feeds off of desire. It needs to be practiced and enforced and schemed out.

D’Antoni has no defensive gameplan. He has no defensive scheme.

Increasingly, it is becoming obvious that he, like many other people, believed Dwight Howard was his own defensive scheme. That Howard would single-handedly cure all of the Lakers defensive limitations. What a huge, bubbling green lugie in the face of Stan Van Gundy.

Of course, Van Gundy can sit back and grin because that has not been the case—especially with Howard less than 100 percent.

As evidenced by the Chicago game where Kirk Hinrich, who has averaged 6.7 points per game this season on a ghastly 37 percent from the field, lit up the Lakers for 22 points on 9-11 shooting—Nash simply can't play defense at all. 

This causes myriad problems as it allows easy penetration, which forces Howard or Pau Gasol to slide over to help. Without a defensive scheme, however, there is no help for the helper, which leaves someone open. Also, Gasol is ill-suited to guard fours in today's NBA. Through no fault of his own, he isn't agile enough to hang with the athletic power forwards in the league and can't recover quickly enough to bother the stretch fours. It's like asking Mo Williams to guard the post. Sure, he might be effective from time to time with a pull-the-chair Barkley move or a flop, but for the most part, he's going to get killed. 

Further problems on the defensive end can be pointed to the fact that Bryant, while an eager on-ball defender, has become a lazy/non-existent help defender at this point in his 17-year-career. 

Besides giving up a lot of points, this reality has a trickle down effect. Since Kobe isn't a helper, the fact that he shoots the most on the team, irks Howard, who believes if he's helping everyone out on the floor, he should get more touches on the offensive end. And if Howard's not getting enough post touches, then where are Gasol's touches going to come from? 

The problem points back to D'Antoni who has no set plays for post ups. And, while Howard is devastating in the pick-and-roll, that play can only work so many times because he is unable to pick-and-pop. Amare Stoudemire and Nash were a devastating P&R combo because Stoudemire excelled at that 15-foot jumper. Stoudemire was also a pretty good freethrow shooter which made fouling him a losing proposition. Howard can finish, but he can't shoot freebies and he can't shoot jumpers, which makes a Nash/Howard P&R extremely predictable, especially if Nash continues to force the pass and not take the shot. 

Gasol has the opposite problem. He can pick and pop and is a good freethrow shooter, but he struggles to finish.  

So, the P&R might work on occasion, but it's not a play that can be run every time down the court. In an effort to feed the bigs, the Lakers are force-feeding the ball down low to Howard early on. But, because there is no set play, Howard is left to freelance. He's been horrible down there too. An excerpt from a CBS Sports story detailing the problems Howard's had in post up situations. 

"Dwight has been regressing in the post the last two years. In the 2010-11 season, Dwight was scoring 0.93 points per post possession, making 50.6 percent of his shots in the post, and turning the ball over 14.5 percent of the time. Last season as Dwight battled injuries and trade rumors he initiated, those numbers slipped to 0.88 PPP and 49.9 percent, while his turnover rate of improved to 13.6 percent.

This season? Dwight is scoring just 0.78 points per possession in the post, making 48.2 percent of his shots, and turning the ball over an astounding 19.7 percent of the time. One out of every five times you throw the ball into the post with Dwight, he's turning it over. That can't be a heavy part of your offense. Kobe probably knows that but begrudgingly still attempts to feed him. This is why the quality of the post possessions you give Dwight is so important."

To complicate matters is Howard's horrific freethrow percentage, the second worst of his career. Empty trip after empty trip going to Howard makes the better offensive players—like Gasol and Bryant—extremely frustrated and literally kills the offense and puts added pressure on a terrible defense to get stops. Obviously, empty trips from Howard, paired with the team's inability to get stops, snowballs and ends with first quarters like the one against the Bulls where the Lakers were down 20-27.

And, the truth of the matter is, if Metta World Peace, Bryant, and Nash are jacking up shots, Gasol and Howard should be able to get offensive rebounds. But this does not make the bigs happy.  

Furthermore, when the play breaks down, the ball is given to Bryant, typically outside the three point line where he is tasked with going to work with a shot clock winding down. The fact he has shot a miserable 35 percent over the past three games, is precisely because he is being put in the least ideal situation to score play-after-play-after-play. Couple this with the amount of energy he must expend guarding the other team's best perimeter player, and it's amazing that Bryant has been able to score as much as he has been able to.

This situation does not make Bryant happy. 

So, it seems he has been reverting to calling his own number when things fall apart, which brings the whole offense down.  

The sad reality is, not enough blame has been put on the shoulders of the former two-time MVP who is supposed to be the catalyst of the D'Antoni system. Nash is not only NOT making the offense hum, but he's the main reason why the defense has been atrocious as well.

Of course, he's in a tough spot. He's supposed to facilitate and make everyone happy, but because he is the initiator of the pick-and-roll and is the team's best pure shooter, he really needs to be taking 10-12 shots a game at minimum to set up the entire offense. Of course, he's 39 years old and is attempting to assuage the situation by trying to get everyone else involved. There are only so many shots to go around, and Nash is a giver. So, he's sacrificing his own shots for the betterment of the team, even though that's probably the opposite of what he should be doing.

In the end, this mess is the responsibility of the coach. A coach who is getting paid millions of dollars to figure these situations out. It's not an easy gig, but that's what D'Antoni signed up for. 

Ironically, Mike Brown had the right idea. The Princeton offense was designed to make everyone on the court a threat and is an excellent half court offense. With the personnel the Lakers have, this would have been ideal. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Brown is a defensive coach, who has a defensive system and knows how to utilize size to its fullest extent. Look at his Cleveland teams that had a collection of big men (Anderson Varejao, Zydrunas Ilgauskus, Ben Wallace, Shaquille O'Neal, JJ Hickson, etc.) that dominated the glass and anchored top-five defenses. 

I wonder if he would be willing to come back...