Six and a half minutes remained in the second quarter of a dog fight between the Lakers and a shorthanded Dallas Mavericks team. With a timeout, head coach J.J. Redick calls for a switch in their defense from traditional man coverage to zone, leading to three straight stops and pushing a six-point lead to a more comfortable 13 en route to an eventual blowout win behind a triple-double from LeBron James.
LA heads into the All-Star break ranked 23rd in defense, a position that puts a clear ceiling on any hopeful contender. While it’s not a long-term solution, increased zone implementation has given the team a counter to some of the natural defensive liabilities on the roster while simplifying responsibilities.
When you are a defense ranked in the bottom seven, you clearly need a shakeup not just with personnel but in schematics or style.
Since playing the Raptors on January 18, the Lakers increased their zone usage to 17.6%, a number that would lead the league by a mile, as revealed in the graphic shown below during Amazon Prime’s NBA coverage.
The team’s zone is allowing stingy 0.86 points per possession and while that’s not a sustainable level of production on that end of the floor, it reveals the new look defense is having some success.
LA mainly relies on a 2-3 zone defense, featuring two perimeter players and three backside players, moving from man-to-man responsibility to defending an area of the floor.
Watch below as the Lakers settle into their 2-3 zone against the Mavs following a timeout. LA, who struggles with dribble penetration, forces the offense to keep moving the ball across the perimeter while shutting off driving lanes and eating up the clock.
It’s a protection against getting beat off the dribble, which happens frequently as the Lakers play a host of slow perimeter players, and it provides certainty about where defensive help comes from. Jaxson Hayes operates from the middle here but shifts across the floor in sync with his team.
“I feel like it gives all of us a better vision of the offense,” Hayes said postgame. “We are all a little back some more, so we all can see and communicate a little better. We’re not just hugged up on our mans. The paint is a little more crowded, so it’s harder for teams that struggle with shooting to score on it.”
The Lakers give up the highest field goal percentage at the rim at 72.4%. One way to alleviate some of the damage is to prevent teams from getting there in the first place.
The Raptors, who came in with the fourth-highest percentage of points in the paint, were held in check and flummoxed by the Lakers’ zone defense.
One of the points of the zone is to force the offense into multiple passes, creating more opportunities for indecision and mistakes. It can be especially useful for two big lineups that otherwise lack foot speed, helping them stay in front of defenders.
Watch below as Redick uses it against the Raptors with a Drew Timme and Deandre Ayton frontline, leveraging their size alongside LeBron James and Jared Vanderbilt.
Once again, as the ball swings on the perimeter, all five guys on the floor shift into their correct positions. The Lakers close out the driving lanes, fly around, and force a tough, contested step back three from Gradey Dick.
“We’ve ran it a few times a game recently,” Redick said after the Toronto win. “Sometimes it’s hard, both as a coach and as a player, when you run it, and it’s a good possession of defense, and the other team hits an off-the-dribble three, which has happened this week. One game it happened three times and it can kind of deflate you.
“But we think it could be a weapon for us tonight, we talked pregame about something that I certainly wanted to do and we wanted to do as a staff and the players were bought into it.”
A zone, no doubt, has loud weaknesses, and there’s a reason teams go to it in spurts as a change of pace. Zone busters, or high-volume 3-point shooters, also exist across the league, waiting for the open shot opportunities they create for offenses. In addition, teams running zone can give up more offensive rebounds as box out responsibilities become disoriented.
The first hurdle to get over in a defensive scheme is buy-in from the players, something Redick seems to have in this group.
“Yeah, that thing got us going,” Ayton said of the zone. “I think really just talking and communicating, getting the blood flowing, knowing who got your back out there and the coaches seeing what works here. Just seeing different coverages thrown at the team and seeing what they could throw back at us.”
This defense has provided an unexpected jolt for the Lakers and even if it has flaws, it might be enough to keep them going for the rest of the season, especially if health allows their high-powered offense to find a similar groove.
You can follow Raj on Twitter at @RajChipalu