Lakers’ offense is missing in inaction

The Lakers’ offense is a mess right now, mired in a flurry of missed shots and decreasing productivity.

In fact, it’s not even clear which offense they’re running from game to game.

Lakers Coach Mike Brown had visions of a system when he first arrived, installing the San Antonio offense that prominently featured big men Tim Duncan and David Robinson when the Spurs were winning championships with them.

But the Lakers have all but abandoned it this season, running it only a handful of times in recent games, opting for a smorgasbord of offensive sets that includes standard NBA motion schemes and isolations.

It’s what Pau Gasol insinuated when he said the Lakers “just didn’t have a good flow” after their 88-85 loss Tuesday in Detroit. They needed a last-second turnaround jumper from Kobe Bryant simply to get to overtime with 78 points.

The Lakers offense also fizzled Wednesday in Washington when they blew a 21-point lead in their 106-101 loss against the woeful Wizards. In the second half the Lakers scored 37 points.

It’s becoming harder for Bryant to hide his impatience with an offense that averages 93.97 points, 21st in the league. Last season under Phil Jackson the Lakers averaged 101.5 points a game, ninth-best in the 30-team league.

In a recent game, Bryant was given the call from Brown to run a play that would have developed on the “weak” side of the court, the side with fewer players. Bryant switched it on his own to a play that ran through the elbow of the free-throw line.

A couple of days before the All-Star game, Bryant left the coaching staff with relatively foreboding words.

“We’ve got to work too hard to get points,” he said. “I’m sure the coaches will talk about it over All-Star break but we’ve got to make our jobs a little easier. We’re going against defenses that are sending double-teams all the time. We’ve got to have a little more movement — free Andrew [Bynum] up, free Pau up, free myself up so I don’t have to work against two guys all the time.”

Bryant made his comments after watching Kevin Durant score 33 points in Oklahoma City’s 100-85 victory over the Lakers.

“Oklahoma does a fantastic job over there,” he added. “They do a great job of putting [Durant] in the right place so he doesn’t have to work too much.”

There hasn’t been anything close to the return of Jackson’s triangle offense, although Bryant went to his familiar “pinch post” spot on the court in a recent game and looked ready to initiate the triangle before realizing his error. Old habits die hard, apparently.

Nobody on the Lakers’ staff has experience coaching the triangle offense. Assistant coach Chuck Person spent last season as Jackson’s defensive coordinator, and he is again focusing on defense for Brown.

Brian Shaw knew the triangle very well but was not hired to replace Jackson after spending six seasons as an assistant under him. Shaw is now the second-in-command on the Indiana Pacers’ staff, filling the position of “associate coach” under head Coach Frank Vogel.

Brown’s top assistant on offense this season is John Kuester, who was fired by Detroit last summer after two unimpressive years as the Pistons’ head coach.

The triangle offense made sense for the Lakers in Jackson’s second tour with the team because they didn’t have a lot of athleticism. Nor were their players particularly young.

The same holds true with this team.

Metta World Peace is better known for his strong-armed defense than fleet feet on offense. Derek Fisher is 37 years old. Bryant, for all his achievements, goes to the basket less often than in his earlier years, usually beating teams now with a series of pinpoint fadeaways and pump-fake jump shots.

Bynum is a patient, deliberate player who is effective down low but lacks the raw burst of Orlando’s Dwight Howard. Gasol’s top offensive weapon, other than his extraordinary passing skills, is his deadly accurate mid-range jump shot.

Brown didn’t like what he saw in the loss in Washington.

“We forced shots, and forcing shots is not a good thing for us,” he said. “We’re not a team that can create on our own. At times down the floor, we have to be an executing team, a spacing team, a team that moves the ball and moves bodies, and in the second half we didn’t do it.

“The ball [got] stuck a lot. We forced shots, whether it was over two people, or in front of one person that was covering us very well.”

The Lakers have a lot of ground to cover, period, if they want to make a mark in the playoffs. Their defense has been solid but their offense needs work. Lots of it.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

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