Defensive Schemes Suffer From Injuries

The offensive sets remain mostly unchanged, so the facelift that has come with the different faces is restricted to the Laker defense, a group that now tries to compensate for the loss of two of its primary weapons with more aggressive approaches.

Coach Del Harris said the Lakers are pressing and trapping two to three times more than before injuries sidelined Shaquille O’Neal and Robert Horry, both major factors on defense. When teams get the ball inside, they also now usually see more double teams, a move designed to force big men to pass rather than go to the basket and perhaps draw a foul from Elden Campbell or Travis Knight, saving the Lakers from dipping into their thin bench.

“Now we’re a smaller team, so we have to do the things smaller teams do,” Harris said. “We have to scramble. I think the guys have done pretty well at it, considering what little time we’ve had.

“The problem is, it also opens up the rest of the court and puts pressure on our players to rotate faster, quicker and more often. We used to mix in the traps and presses with less frequency. Now, we’ve probably doubled the frequency. We have to do it.”

The other problem is, the extra movement can tire a team out, young legs or not.

It’s all part of the real problem, of course: No O’Neal, no Horry. With the sound bodies that remain, the Lakers have gone from allowing opponents to shoot 43.6% to 47.4% in the seven games since both were sidelined. The scoring defense has increased from 95.4 to 102.1 in the same stretch, although that includes double-overtime against the Knicks. Using only the numbers from regulation, the Lakers are surrendering 98.7.