Faster Offense Will Require Furious Defense

In the perfect, new Laker world, an up-tempo offense makes geometric sense, straight lines running up and down the court instead of coming to rest in a triangle.

“We’ve got a lot of athletic guys on this team, a lot of people that handle, shoot, jump.... We can make a lot happen,” forward Lamar Odom said.

But before the Lakers are penciled in for 100 points a game, there have to be other considerations, namely defense and rebounding.

“Anyone can run, run, run,” Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. “You’ve got to stop people if you want to do that. My No. 1 thing is to get us to be a good defensive team.”

This season’s Lakers are faster and younger, with an average age of 29.6 in their projected starting lineup, compared to last season’s average starting age of 31.4. The vision is to be bothersome with a hawking, annoying defense that converts turnovers into simple baskets. There’s definitely room for defensive improvement: The Lakers were 16th in the league last season, giving up 94.3 points a game.

But what the Lakers have gained in speed and youth, they have lost in power.

With Shaquille O’Neal in Miami and Karl Malone in retirement limbo, the Lakers have lost 600 pounds of strength and elbows. O’Neal and Malone combined for 20.2 rebounds last season.

On top of that, the Lakers will need to replace their presence in the half-court offense, which circles back to needing more than just an up-tempo offense.

“I think we can be a high-energy team, fastbreaking, but we’ve also got to understand that even the best running teams, it’s only about 30% of the time that you do that,” Tomjanovich said. “The rest of the time you’ve got to have a good half-court offense. There’s got to be a balance there.”

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Although there is a pending civil lawsuit against him, Kobe Bryant said he did not plan to miss any games this season. “Barring injury, no,” Bryant said.

A felony sexual assault charge against Bryant was dismissed Sept. 1, but his accuser is seeking unspecified civil damages. If a settlement is not reached, a trial in the civil case would probably not take place until next year, perhaps after the Laker season.

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The Lakers signed free-agent center Ike Nwankwo, who played at UCLA and Long Beach State. Nwankwo averaged 2.5 points and 5.2 rebounds over the last two seasons with the Huntsville Flight of the National Basketball Development League.