THE NBA AT THE QUARTER TURN
When the Haters Come Out, the Only Sound the NBA Hears is “Ka-Ching!”
What we learned from the NBA’s In-Season Tournament
The NBA came up with a gimmick — the In-Season Tournament — that juiced up meaningless November and December regular season games overshadowed by the NFL.
People dismissed the garish courts, terrible tournament name, and uninspiring prizes as a meaningless publicity stunt. But something went wrong.
The players seemed to care, led by one LeBron James.
It doesn’t matter if multimillionaires and almost-billionaires view $500,000 as chump change, a trophy is a trophy, and bragging rights are bragging rights.
If the players care, the games matter more, and the level of play showed it.
The round robin part of the tournament featured crazy games, like the rematch of last year’s playoff opponents, the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors.
And it was a coming out party for the Indiana Pacers, who beat the best teams in the East: Boston, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia.
But the big story was the Lakers’ unexpected domination in tournament games. They went 4–0 in the round robin, with a ridiculous +74 point differential. While fans dismissed it as a lucky draw (which they had), something was changing. They got back most of their injured wing defenders, like Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura, and Cam Reddish.
In their last five tournament games, they held their opponents to an average of 99 points per game. That is unheard of in the modern, 3-point happy NBA, where the lowest scoring team in the league averages 105.5 points per game.
Nothing says NBA Basketball is at the top of fans’ minds than the word “rigged.”
The knockout rounds are where the fans really got caught up in the fervor of the IST. And it all centered around one controversial play at the end of the Lakers-Suns quarterfinal game.
It didn’t matter than the Lakers defense eclipsed the Suns in a way rarely seen since the 1990s. They forced Kevin Durant and Devin Booker — two of the best offensive players in the league — to commit 12 turnovers. They were constantly harassed by the big Lakers defenders and had to hit difficult, contested shots just to keep the game close.
It didn’t matter that the Lakers forced 20 Suns turnovers and dominated the boards with 21 offensive rebounds. This gave the Lakers a lot of extra possessions, leading to them taking 27 more shots in the game, but they missed most of them, making only 37.3% of their shots, compared to 49.3% for the Suns. NBA teams are something like 1–600 when a team gets outshot that badly.
And it didn’t matter that Devin Booker committed an obvious foul as he knocked Austin Reaves off balance, then immediately raised his hands feigning innocence like every guilty player in sports history.
All that mattered was for all the LeBron and Lakers haters to scream in unison, “the game was rigged!”
So now we have the official start of the NBA season, just like last season!
Last year, all anyone could talk about was the free throw disparity enjoyed by the Lakers. When you have big players attacking the rim all game, they draw more fouls than a team full of jump shooters. This has been born out historically. Except when it comes to the Lakers.
In the Lakers-Suns game, LeBron James and Anthony Davis took 32 shots near the rim and shot 12 free throws before Phoenix was forced to take an intentional foul at the end of the game. Durant and Booker took 16 shots near the rim and shot 12 free throws.
But remember, the refs rigged the game for the Lakers.
In Las Vegas, the fix was obviously in.
Forget about Indiana beating media darlings Boston and Milwaukee in the first two knockout rounds. Adam Silver wanted to build Tyrese Haliburton’s brand as the next great guard in the NBA.
On the other side of the draw, according to one troll on twitter, the New Orleans Pelicans gave up early because they knew the game was rigged for the Lakers.
That’s why they lost by 44 points.
It’s irrelevant if the Lakers defense is perfectly built to defend slower guys like CJ McCollum, Brandon Ingram and the blimp formerly known as Zion Williamson.
And it’s clear that the refs made the ball go in the basket as the Lakers finally made some of the wide open three-point shots that teams have dared them to shoot all season. Unfortunately for the Pelicans, the Lakers made 17 of them.
Finally, in the IST Title Game, the Lakers dominated the Pacers with their size and defense, but the game was entertaining and tightly contested until the last five minutes.
Indiana’s #1 rated offense is historically good so far this season. Their 123.5 offensive rating is the best in league history. (For context, last year’s Sacramento Kings were the first team to eclipse 118, while the 73-win Warriors had a 113.5 offensive rating.)
The Lakers held them to 109 points on 36.8% shooting and 24.4% from deep (10 of 41). The only thing that kept the game competitive was Indiana’s 29 free throws and the fact that the Lakers only made 2 out of 13 shots from beyond the arc.
The Lakers dominated Indiana’s bottom 5 defense on the boards (+23) and in points in the paint (+42), but only shot two more free throws.
Naturally, the refs were trying to fool the fans by awarding the jump-shooting Pacers one more free throw through the first three quarters. This allowed them to fix the game for the Lakers with a 9–6 free throw advantage avalanche in the fourth quarter.
The main thing to remember is that if the Lakers are good, the NBA wins. Half the fans can hold on to their dreams of a Lakers championship and the other half can troll to their hearts’ content.
The biggest lessons from the IST are:
- The Lakers are built to be a playoff team. The had at least one day of rest before every tournament game, so LeBron and Davis were fresh enough to play at their best. In non-tournament games, the Lakers are 0–3 in the second game of a back-to-back, which has also been the third game in four nights.
- The pressure and intensity of the tournament games was real, even if the IST was just a promotional gimmick. Tyrese Haliburton spoke about how different these games felt to him and how he hoped it would lead him and his team to play more of them in the post-season.
- If the Lakers and Pacers have deep playoff runs, it may be because of the experience gained by their young players. Haliburton was a star of the FIBA World Cup and he made another big jump this season. All his young teammates competed against four of the NBA’s best teams and came through in crunch time against the Celtics and Bucks.
- The desire and work put in by LeBron James was an incredible team-building exercise for the Lakers. The $500,000 prize represents a 20% bonus for the team’s vet minimum guys (Wood, Hayes, Reddish), a 30% bonus for Max Christie, a 45% bonus for rookie Maxwell Lewis and almost a 100% bonus for the three G-League players on the roster (Castleton, Fudge, and Hodge). Those guys are going to run through walls for LeBron this season.
Let’s get serious, though. How good are the Lakers?
Basketball is a simple game. When you have a smaller guy guarding a bigger guy, you’ve got a problem. Since the Lakers got healthy — and their coach stopped using 3-guard lineups — they have become an elite defense.
Per NBA.com, over the last 15 games (the IST Title game does not count as a regular season game, so I can’t find the advanced stats), the Lakers are #3 in defensive rating, #5 in defensive rebounding percentage, #10 in opponent points in the paint, and #19 in opponent second chance points.
That last metric is huge because the Lakers were rock bottom at the start of the season. Combined with their anemic offensive rebounding, the point differential on second chance points was historically bad in October (-10.3) and November (-7.9). In their three December games, their point differential has completely changed (+2.6).
Over the last 15 games, the Lakers are tied for the second best record in the NBA and are #7 in net rating. Of course, with small sample sizes, a 44-point win against the Pelicans helped to balance out their blow out losses to Philadelphia and Oklahoma City.
Despite their below-average offensive rating (#18) and 3-point shooting percentage (#26), the improved Lakers defense helps create better offense as they are very good in assist percentage (#8), fast break points (#7) and getting to the free throw line (#4), effective field goal percentage (#8), and true shooting percentage (#9).
If the Lakers can stay healthy in the post season, they match up well against Minnesota (Davis absolutely owns Gobert), and should overpower small ball teams like Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Sacramento, and Golden State.
Watching the Lakers trapping defense on two of the best guards in the NBA — Booker and Haliburton — should send chills down the spines of the rest of the league.
The only team that should give the Lakers trouble are the defending champions. Even though Nikola Jokic is the best offensive player on the planet, he wasn’t the main reason Denver swept the Lakers.
Last year, Jamal Murray and Bruce Brown destroyed the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals because Dennis Schroder was too small, D’Angelo Russell was too slow, and Austin Reaves was too weak.
But they got a little worse this year after losing Bruce Brown and Jeff Green.
Meanwhile, the Lakers added three good perimeter defenders in Cam Reddish, Taurean Prince, and Max Christie.
While I still give Denver the edge as the title favorite this year, the Lakers have closed the gap.
