Could More Physicality Help the Lakers' Bad Defense? Plus, Jaxson Hayes is back! (So are Durant, Beal and Vassell)

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers were a pretty bad defensive team last season.

This season, they're pretty bad again. Which isn't all that surprising when you consider it's almost entirely the same roster as a year ago, and the major change (Dalton Knecht for Taurean Prince) probably makes them a little worse on that side of the ball. So in the wake of Saturday's second half collapse against the Nuggets and a mounting body of evidence that they're just not good enough on D as currently constructed/deployed to hang with the rest of the conference it's natural to start looking for ways to get better that don't center around "get different personnel." Because at least for now, that's really not an option.

They can, however, try to play differently. That's what Austin Reaves talked about following a surprisingly vigorous practice Monday in El Segundo (given a back-to-back coming tonight in Phoenix and then tomorrow in San Antonio, kicking off five games in seven nights). "I think if you watch basketball for a long time, the teams that are ‘physical defensive teams’ might get away with a little more just because every possession you can’t call a foul... So we’re trying to get to that where we’re physical every possession and we have to make the refs call fouls. Our personnel, if we’re honest with ourselves, isn’t the best defensively. Obviously we got AD that covers up a lot, but we have to be physical out on the perimeter and especially when we’re boxing out. We got to do a better job defensively in transition as well.”

It's hard to argue with anything he's saying, but the question is whether the Lakers really have the personnel to make it work. It's pretty clear they're willing to try and turn the knobs in different ways, like the emphasis on offensive rebounding (corner crashing!) that seemed to dominate training camp. Well, the results haven't been significantly stronger than last year. Why? Because they're playing without some of the size they hoped for (no Vanderbilt, no Wood and Hachimura missing a couple games) and they just don't have a lot of good defensive players.

So what and Redick actually do about this?

HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky
SEGMENT 1: Everyone's getting healthy again, just in time to face LA.

SEGMENT 2: How much can changing strategies overcome shortcomings in the roster, especially on defense?

SEGMENT 3: What's even changable, anyway?

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