For Christian Wood, Lakers’ role is easy to define but hard to attain

Happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone. I’m Dan Woike, beat writer for the L.A. Times, and welcome to the Lakers’ newsletter. Let’s get right to it, the food is getting cold.

The adjustment bureau

There’s no question that Christian Wood wanted Wednesday‘s game to go well when playing against the Dallas Mavericks.

Wood went from being on the doorstep of a lucrative extension with Dallas to being out of the Mavericks’ plans completely by the end of last season.

He found his way to the Lakers in the final moments of free agency this summer, signing with them on a deal for the veteran’s minimum with everything to prove, and in a lot of ways, his future in the league at stake.

So when he was asked about seeing his most recent employer the night before the Lakers hosted the Mavericks, Wood grinned like a lion who just got served up a 16-ounce ribeye.

“I know it’s my former team. I definitely want to go at those guys,” he said. “But [I concentrate on] just being calm, staying patient and playing my game, letting the game come to me and trying to find a rhythm on the floor because I’ve been trying to do that for this whole season so far.”

But Wood didn’t factor in the Lakers’ 104-101 loss to Dallas. He played 15 minutes. He took a single shot. Members of his former team sensed Wood’s frustration as he was waved out of post-ups and absent from any meaningful action.

It was a tough night — a reminder that he’s trying to do one of the hardest things in the NBA, reinvent himself into a winning player with fewer touches and fewer minutes.

Wood averaged at least 11.5 shots in each of the last three seasons, scoring at least 16.6 points, the Lakers seeing his scoring prowess first-hand last year on Christmas when he had 30 for Dallas in a nine-point win.

But this season, that’s not how it’s worked out. As a Laker, he’s taking a little over five shots per game. And a recent article on NBA.com noted that no player in the league has had a higher drop in usage rate than Wood.

“I’m not playing a role I played the last four or five years, which was being a high-usage guy, taking a lot of shots,” Wood said after the Dallas loss. “Playing this role player role, where I’m trying … if the team needs help with rebounds, I have to try and help rebound. And whatever they need to do, I’m there to do. Some nights, they’re going to run plays for me, some nights they’re not. I just got to be prepared for that.”

His ability to score is what’s kept him in the league despite bouncing from team to team throughout his career. It’s also been the cleanest way to judge a good or bad night for Wood throughout that career — one that’s spanned more than 300 regular-season games long without a playoff appearance.

Lakers forward Christian Wood pump-fakes Mavericks forward Richaun Holmes into the air before taking a shot on Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

It was something he and coach Darvin Ham spoke about at length this offseason, Wood vowing to commit to a diminished offensive role in service of fortifying the Lakers bench.

“Maybe if I had five points, five rebounds and was a plus-15, I think that’s a great night for me,” Wood said Wednesday. “That would be impacting winning. I’m not putting up 20-and-10s, 30s-and-20s and all this other stuff anymore. I mean, I can when given the opportunity. But this year, I think it’s just more about doing the little things to help out the team.”

Wood has had a positive plus/minus in 10 games this season and the Lakers are 8-2 in those games. It’s not a perfect metric, but along with what he’s saying, it points to a willingness to try to do the right things.

“It’s a contrast between playing or producing at a high level for your individual self or playing and producing at a high level for your team,” Ham said before the Mavericks game when asked about players adjusting to lesser roles. “A lot of guys who are not mentally focused so much on the unit as opposed to being focused on themselves, they fall into that trap of outside noise. And people comparing what they did last year in the situation vs. what they’re doing in a situation this year.

“We’re all about winning basketball around here. And I’m speaking for no other team except my own. The things you have to do when everyone’s bought in and preaching the same message from an organization standpoint all the way down to the coaches, players and everyone else, to be selfish individually, you stick out like a sore thumb.”

Ham said the Lakers’ championship experience can help alleviate that.

“We have people, personnel within our camp that have achieved the highest goal you can achieve in this league, some of us a couple, several times over,” he said. “Once you put that around a person, they’re able to explore other ways they’re going to help a winning situation and not so much help themselves within the situation and not really care about what happens to the group.

“You have to have that care factor for the group. That group has to constantly be about the big picture and how do we get in the short term to accomplish the big goal and the big picture.”

Following Wednesday’s loss, Wood again smiled in the locker room. The game had not gone at all as he had wanted. All of his instincts told him he wanted to go at his old team, to show them what they missed out on. Those old instincts, Wood said, had to be suppressed.

He wanted to stay within his new role on his new team — and despite wanting something different, he never forced anything Wednesday. His lone highlight, in a lot of ways, was an assist to Anthony Davis.

“It’s a little tough,” Wood acknowledged.

It’s probably harder than that. But he’s still trying.

The Times Lakers Show

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Song of the week

“Autumn Sweater” by Yo La Tengo

The last days of fall deserve a beautiful song about a season that doesn’t get enough love (because it lasts like 15 minutes in Southern California).

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