For their first two seasons under Frank Vogel, the Lakers’ defining, dominant trait was a hellacious, gritty and physical defense that came at opponents in waves. Right from the start, Vogel’s plan to use quick, strong and focused point-of-attack defenders funneled drivers towards a wall of arms at the rim, and the team used those stops to score with selective speed in transition. It was a formula that — combined with enough star power offensively to prevail in close games — allowed the team to dominate en route to their 2020 title, and overcome injuries to finish with the best defense in the NBA in 2021.

That 2020 title team especially used the blueprint to such great success that video analyst Pete “Laker Film Room” Zayas coined a perfect descriptor for them on their run to the championship: The Bigger, Faster, Stronger Lakers. But a little over one calendar year — and two seasons — later, two offseasons worth of personnel overhauls have left this team’s roster looking entirely different, and it’s fair to say that none of those adjectives apply to these Lakers anymore.

But while this roster’s stylistic shift towards defensively challenged bucket-getters is fairly easy to see at this point, some of the last remaining defense-focused principles are quietly and understatedly pushing back against the dying of the light, calling for more effort and subtly critiquing this roster construction as the team languishes just barely outside of the bottom 10 in the NBA in defensive efficiency. One only has to pay attention, and do a little bit of reading between the lines, to see it.

The dirty little secret of the NBA’s pre and postgame media availabilities is that they often don’t provide much insight. Most of those involved stick to coachspeak and PR-friendly talking points, often not even really addressing the premise of the original query. A lot of answers fall in the vein of “both teams played hard” cliches.

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https://www.silverscreenandroll.com/2021/11/24/22800650/lakers-defense-identity-crisis-anthony-davis-avery-bradley-frank-vogel