Mike Brown, Hired To Fix The Laker Defense, Will Not Be Fixing The Laker Defense

the Lakers may transcend what they did during that 17-1 stretch

The Lakers do need roster moves to adapt with the league and give them fresher legs. A restful offseason was more of what I was thinking as well.

by their gentlemen’s area. When you’re forced to live and die by the most unaccountable superstar in the NBA, your options are limited. It looks like Mike Brown and the Lakers feel that he’ll get much better results with a team being led by players who’ll be more accountable and who know exactly what it takes to win it.
Not saying this roster is the perfect model of accountability, but it is way more favorable than the Cavs Brown had.
Lets see how this translates on the court.

The D’Antoni analogy doesn’t make sense me. He didn’t invent the triangle or ever run it. Brown, on the other hand, did create the defensive scheme we ran last year. Person got it from Brown from their days with the Pacers. Regardless, I’m more of a wait a see kind of guy. The defense worked well during an awesome stretch and, while, it let them down in the playoffs and end of season, I think there is more to the story than “the system sucked”.

As for accountability issues with Brown, absolutely, that will be the biggest question going in the the next season, whenever it starts. Again, I’ll take the wait and see approach. I do believe that people can grow from experiences. I don’t believe that Brown was entirely at fault for what happened in Cleveland. He was a first time head coach that didn’t have sway with the front office. What first time head coach does? Winning cures all but winning comes from solid and stable organizations that allows that to happen (see Pat Riley). The LeBron era Cavs don’t provide me with the full story on Mike Brown’s capabilities. Again, I’ll wait and see.

As mostly, only the latter was present after the ASG, and we looked freaking unbeatable during that period. I don’t think the rotations were great even then, but the sheer fact that there was a legit second effort there to lock down on defense, along with Drew erasing mistakes left and right made up for all of it. So combine that with some better overall execution and the defense should be fine.

1. That’s a fair point. Part of the post-ASG surge was because Drew quite literally did everything you just listed on his lonesome. I think that funneling baseline a strategy that can work if 1) the other big can rotate to help via weakside rebounding or picking up a loose man 2) the wing (or point) who was just beat does more than a token effort at getting back to his man or picking up the big (as this almost never happened) 3) the wings help out with the defensive rebounding responsibilities (or the point, per your hilarious counter of Fish’s rebounding prowess last year).

The first item was why the defense looked better with Odom out there with Drew instead of Pau, as he could handle those rotations, but I think Pau checking out mentally hurt a lot because he basically forgot how to rebound after the ASG break and while that was okay when Drew was Dwight Howard-lite, it hurt a lot when his intensity slowed down a bit afterwards. The rest of the points go back to the accountability/effort thing, as better rotations and some smarter help defense would compensate rotation-wise, as they’re not reversing the ball that fast if Drew gets out on the penetrating player.

So yeah, while overall, it’s demanding (and would help to have the actual Dwight Howard to pull this off), it’s doable if the other players pitch in more than they did last season, and Brown’s presence should ensure that they’re constantly reminded of their assignments. So even if Drew doesn’t come next season with all of that intensity he had pre-ASG, it should still be at that level with all the kinks worked out, and it would be even better when they focused on a real opponent.

2. lol, that’s why I want Iggy. He’s basically like having Revis or Asomugha — shuts down part of the court by removing a player from the game and is athletic and active enough to be a factor in help defense as well. If we really can get him for only Odom/Walton, then being able to cross-match any combination of Kobe/Iggy/Artest/Barnes for three positions essentially fixes 90% of your concern there.

If not, then I still think it’s a problem of rotations and effort. If for instance, Kobe and Artest put forth more than a token effort at stopping a penetrating wing, that alone stops the chain reaction that leads to someone getting open off a slow rotation or someone getting caught on a screen. There will always be cases in which no rotation will be fast enough, but you can’t help those regardless of scheme.

Moreover, for all of this, I really doubt that Brown will sit there and watch a particular scheme fail multiple times in game without adjusting it properly for the opponent, as we’ll no longer have the Phil “figure it out dammit” lack of timeouts, so there should be more micro-adjustments game to game beyond the scope of the general overall scheme.