LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Lakers have the history, the glamour and the stars.
They’re not all that good though.
The Los Angeles Lakers have the No. 1 or 1A best player of all time in LeBron James and, in Luka Doncic, one of the best players in the world right now.
And when Austin Reaves is healthy (he’s been out since at least Christmas with a calf strain) they have a true three-headed monster, at least on offence.
In contrast, the Toronto Raptors have the team that most of the NBA hasn’t paid all that much attention to since, oh, 2019 or so.
But the Raptors have qualities the Lakers can only dream about.
You could sense the wistfulness in Lakers head coach JJ Redick’s voice as he noted the Raptors relative strengths:
“They’re very fast, they run. They run really hard and they’re great at getting to the paint. That’s a trend league-wide for teams that have these young players that can really move,” Redick said. “They’re able to get in paint and break down the defence and create havoc that way.
“And the other thing is their activity level on defence is what has made them a really good defence this year — getting deflections, getting steals and turning you over. They gamble a lot and they have license to do so, it’s part of the fabric of their team and that creates a lot of disruption.”
A pretty good scouting report on the Raptors, in other words.
The unsaid part was that the Lakers aren’t really any of those things. They plod on offence, content to let Doncic and James manufacture magic in the half-court. Always be orchestrating, would be their motto.
And defensively? That’s so much work, isn’t it?
Since Dec. 1 when the Lakers were 15-4 and getting everyone excited about something big in L.A. beyond hype, the Lakers have the NBA’s 29th-ranked defence. A big problem is their stars: When James and Doncic share the floor the Lakers hemorrhage 117.1 points a game and have a -4.3 net rating.
But here’s the thing: If the Raptors don’t run enough and can’t make shots enough and aren’t disruptive enough, all that youthful energy goes nowhere.
And when teams play zone for long stretches — as the heavy-legged Lakers did Sunday night — all of the Raptors advantages seemingly vaporize.
There are plenty of coaching points that can be emphasized and recycled: move the ball, play inside out, trust the open look.
But it really comes down to this when playing against a zone defence: “Make some (expletive) threes,” as forward Brandon Ingram put it in a sombre Raptors locker room.
That was not the case Sunday night at Crypto.com Arena where the Lakers stars controlled the pace and the game and earned the 110-93 win over the visiting Raptors.
The Lakers had been blown out the night before in Portland while the Raptors were getting some late-day Vitamin D in Los Angeles and getting out for some nice dinners.
But instead of pushing the pace and making the Lakers play outside their comfort zone and take advantage of a tired, old team, Toronto ended up with too many halfcourt possessions, playing to the Lakers strengths and the Raptors weaknesses.
And it really came down to shooting.
The Lakers connected on 14-of-38 from deep, which is a good number, but not exactly crippling. But the Raptors? They were just 7-of-32.
Toronto had more offensive rebounds, took more shots, shot a healthy 53 per cent on from inside the three-point line and forced the Lakers into 15 turnovers while making just 10 themselves.
But the Lakers, out of necessity and following a playbook teams have been using against the Raptors more and more regularly, sat in their zone and let the Raptors miss 25 mostly open looks from deep.
And why not? Coming into Sunday the Raptors were shooting 27 per cent from deep over their past six games. The Lakers loss was the fourth time in seven games that the Raptors had made seven threes or less in a game. For the season the Raptors are last in three-point percentage (34.0) and 24th in makes.
The 93 points the Raptors scored was the lowest total the Lakers had allowed all season, but they only deserve so much credit. The Raptors had a hand in their own demise.
“The game was mainly in the half court because they were able to score and so their defence was going to be set,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “And a lot of possessions they were in a zone, so it’s really hard to play with a fast break and with a lot of pace (against that) … it was really hard for us to get in transition as much as we want.”
Chances are teams are going to keep zoning them until they can prove they shouldn’t.
“We just have to keep trusting the shot,” said Sandro Mamukelashvili, who scored 20 points for Toronto off the bench and made two threes in five attempts while adding six rebounds. “I think today we were passing out of some shots because we wanted to get a better shot, and I think that’s what a zone does. They don’t really close out so you think they’re rotating and now you got a guy open and you pass it. You got to attack it and collapse the paint or trust your shot and then go crash the boards.”
Beyond the problem caused by simply missing shots, the zone took the Raptors away from their strengths.
In the first half Toronto was able to get plenty of stops — they were able to force the Lakers into six turnovers and held them to 8-of-18 shooting which allowed Toronto to do what they do best: run. The Raptors had a 7-2 edge in fastbreak points and led 30-23 after 12 minutes. The Lakers heated up from three in the second quarter (4-of-11) and the Raptors started to wobble, but it took a Doncic triple at the horn to give the Lakers a 55-54 lead at half.
But a 26-8 run from the 2:03 mark of the third quarter to midway through the fourth — where the Lakers made four threes to the Raptors’ one — blew the game open.
Meanwhile the Lakers were able to pick the Raptors apart, with Doncic and James calmly surveying the defence creating one good look after another either for themselves (the Lakers star duo combined for 49 points and 14 assists) or their teammates. Most often the beneficiary was Lakers centre DeAndre Ayton who scored 25 points on 10-of-10 shooting, almost all of them shots at the rim, assisted by the Lakers stars.
“They’re just tough. They’re big point guards, so every time they would drive and somebody would step out they would just throw it to Ayton and then he would get a bucket,” said Mamukelashvili.
The easiest solution would be if the Raptors on the roster who are expected to make open threes would make some. Instead Gradey Dick, Jamison Battle and Ochai Agbaji — each who would have ‘make open threes’ near the top of their job description — were 0-of-6 and Jamal Shead, who needs to become a useful three-point shooter if he’s going to reach his potential as a point guard, was 1-of-5.
‘Make some shots’ isn’t a sophisticated coaching strategy, but it’s going to be hard for the Raptors to play to their considerable strengths if teams keep sitting back in zone against them because they can.
Gain one, lose one: The good news is that it looks like RJ Barrett, who has missed 21 of the Raptors last 27 games — first with a knee injury and more recently a sprained ankle — appears to be close to returning to action. He went through a hard workout pre-game Sunday and showed no ill effects. The hope is Barrett will play on the Raptors five-game road trip, perhaps as soon as Wednesday against Sacramento.
The less good news is that Jakob Poeltl (back) doesn’t appear to be any closer to returning. He worked out pre-game Sunday as well, but not at anywhere close to game pace. The big concern now is how long rookie forward Collin Murray-Boyles — who has been filling in at centre in Poeltl’s absence — will be out. He left Sunday’s game in the third quarter after being chopped hard by Doncic. There was no foul on called on the play. Murray-Boyles was diagnosed with a bruised thumb and the x-rays were negative. He had 11 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots — all of them on Doncic — in his 25 minutes before the injury.
Redick an Ingram fan: The Lakers head coach was a teammate of Brandon Ingram’s for a season-and-a-half in New Orleans over the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, the first of which was Ingram’s lone all-star appearance. Redick saw then what the Raptors have experienced first-hand this season: a hooper’s hooper, as Raptors general manager Bobby Webster put it during training camp.
“I always appreciated Brandon’s love for playing basketball,” said Redick. “And this may sound like a surprise, but not everybody in this sport loves playing. Not everybody in this sport loves going to the gym or loves watching film or loves competing, and you just saw that right away with him. He’s such a gifted player and certainly a priority on our scouting report and pre-game.”
Mamukelashvili in one piece: The Raptors big man had two hard falls against the Lakers. Once in the first half when Marcus Smart slid under him late on a drive and sent him tumbling head-first into the floor. On the other the Georgian centre took a cross-body block from Ayton and went hard to the floor the other way, landing tailbone first.
“The first fall was hard because I got so tense, my fall was bad, so that got me a little out of it. The second fall was bad too, so. But I recovered, I came back.”
