Beast or Burden: Stone Wall

That was not a fun way to watch basketball. Years of the triangle have given us some idea of what good offensive execution looks like, and needless to say, nearly everything outside of a certain Kobe Bryant has looked pretty terrible recently. That noted, the Lakers have won six of their last seven, and it might be pretty safe to say that the reason is due to some fairly superlative play at the other end of the court. We have all said it one time or another -- Mike Brown was brought here to put in a championship-caliber defense, and thus far he has succeeded. That is why the defense is the first item in an inaugural series we will be putting out this week named "Beast or Burden" in which we will look at three items on the rise recently, as well as three things that require some -- often serious -- work to get back up to par. Without further ado, let us begin:

Beast

• The Defense -- It hasn't been perfect by any means. You still see missed coverage every now and then, whether it is someone leaving a shooter open or infuriatingly, a missed box out, especially with both our starting bigs on the floor. But there is no question it is getting the job done, and there is no place it shines better than in the fourth quarter, when the Lakers squeeze the life out of opposing offenses, which is often necessary given how dismal our own crunch time offense is. Monday's fourth quarter must have sounded like a beautiful symphony to Mike Brown, as Pau Gasol played superlative defense on Dirk Nowitzki and our bigs in general completely stymied the Mavs' pick-and-roll attack at every turn. Gasol and Josh McRoberts in particular have done extremely well with Brown's hard hedge strategy, and it has been a lifesaver for our otherwise slow (Fisher) or inexperienced (Morris) guards. Bynum has owned the interior, perhaps not as dominantly as he did post-ASG last year, but still at a very effective rate. Stuff like this wins championships, and Brown deserves mad props if he devises a zone scheme to slow down Miami tomorrow.

• Derek Fisher -- That might have been his one good game of the year. There's a 99.9% that there will be a rather large regression to the mean against Miami. That noted, he basically won the ball game by himself for the Lakers in the fourth quarter, coming up with two big steals, a PUJIT he actually hit, a layup in transition, a pair of free throws, and a classic crunch-time three. If he played half as well as he did last night all the time, we would complain about Fisher approximately 95% less, even with all the positively nonsensical stuff he does despite having 15 years in the league under his belt. With Steve Blake out and Darius Morris struggling with being a rookie, we'll have to hope that he has a few more of those games left.
• Andrew Bynum -- We talked about his defense, which has definitely been his calling card as he has struggled on the other end after teams figured out that they can bother him by sending a barrage of double teams. He is gradually showing signs of figuring it out, awkward as it is, such as his baseline pass to Kapono in the game against Dallas, and he is getting better at getting into his moves immediately after the catch. Either way, besides Fisher, Bynum alone was a positive for the Lakers on offense on Monday, and it is more endearing every game to see him gobble up rebounds and defend with alacrity and decisiveness despite being forgotten about by his teammates a whole lot on the other end. Part of that is maturity, and it's what we want to see.
• Honorable mentions go to Matt Barnes, who warms my heart by being one of the few guys on this team that understands the concept of cutting, and Josh McRoberts for a solid all-around game last night.