Lakers - Wolves benchmarking the competition - Defensive Analysis and Statistics

It would be pointless to only look at defensive statistics for the Kings. You really need a point of comparison to understand what these statistics mean and how our players are actually performing. With that said, I will be doing this same defensive tracking for a number of other games as well. I will mostly be looking at Lakers games for two pretty simple reasons. First, most of my friends are Lakers fans. And second, they are at the pinnacle of the league. We are trying to replicate their level of success, so it makes sense to understand what constitutes a championship level.

Ironically, the Lakers game against the Wolves was actually a terrible defensive game for them. They did not contest nearly enough shots. They were slow on rotations, gambled for steals and gave up 108 points in a nail biter against a mediocre offensive team. Interestingly enough, the Wolves only tried to post up 3 times this game and scored once (Kevin Love over Josh Powell).

For a quick recap, I will be tracking Heavily Contest Shots (HC), Lightly Contested Shots (LC), Altered/Blocked Shots (ABS), Forced Turnovers (FTO), and times a player was beaten 1 on 1 into the lane (BL).

I ditched the post stats for this game, because there were only 3 post ups period. Most of the Wolves attack was perimeter oriented.

Let’s start with our defensive player of the game.

Lamar Odom – This wasn’t even close. I’ll be honest, I have not always been a big LO fan, but have really come to appreciate his defense this season. He is a force and it showed in the stats. Lamar was able to alter/block 3 shots, heavily contest 11 shots and lightly contest 8 more. On top of that he forced 3 turnovers and did not get beaten into the lane once. He was the one Laker consistently challenging drives and closing out on shooters. Without LO’s heroic defense, the Lakers probably give up over 120 points and are facing an embarrassing loss.


And our defensive goat of the game:

Josh Powell – This was probably his worst game of the season on both sides of the ball. Without even looking at the stats, I can tell you he missed several rotations and was part of the reason the Lakers gave up over 7 uncontested shots a quarter. The statistics back up these observations as Powell only heavily contested one shot, lightly contested one more and forced a turnover. He was also the only Laker to get scored on in the post.

Other notes:

- Jordan Farmar was very hit or miss. He likes to gamble a lot and gives up on plays too easily. As a result he was able to force 5 turnovers, which is outstanding, but also was beaten 1 on 1 into the lane four times (very bad for 21 minutes of play). As a contrast Fisher was beaten twice in 27 minutes. Also, before someone points out that Farmar had 6 steals in the box score, yet I only attributed 5 forced turnovers to him I just want to remind everyone that FTOs are credited to the person who creates the turnover, which is often the person who knocks the ball away from the ball handler or who tips the pass, not the person who just picks the ball up.

- Kobe was not as active on defence as I have seen him in other games. He altered/blocked on shot technically (in reality he hacked Foye but there was no foul call), heavily contested two shots and lightly contest two more. He was actually beaten by his man into the lane twice. Kobe’s concentration might have been off with his milestone of cracking the top 20 scorers in NBA history.

- As a team the Lakers gave up too many uncontested looks with 29 over the course of the game. This was not the tenacious Lakers defense that I have seen smoother teams this season.

Statistics – Min – ABS – HC – LC – BL – FTO-PSU-PST

D. Fisher – 27 – 1 - 3 – 3 – 2 – 1
Kobe Bryant – 37 – 1 - 2 – 3 – 2 – 1
Lamar Odom – 41 – 3 – 11 – 8 – 0 – 3
Pau Gasol – 39 – 2 – 3 – 0 – 4 – 0
Luke Walton – 30 – 0 – 2 – 4 – 2 – 2
Jordon Farmar – 21 - 0 – 0 – 1 – 4 – 5
Trevor Ariza – 18 – 0 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 2
Sasha Vujacic – 11 – 0 – 0 – 1 – 1 – 1
Josh Powell – 13 – 0 – 1 – 1 – 0 – 1
DJ Mbenga – 3 – 1 – 0 – 0 – 0 - 0