How Much Defense Is Enough?
Laker Film Room - Dedicated to the Study of Lakers Basketball
Pete Zayas
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
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Summary
After remaking their roster this offseason, the Lakers added many talented players -- but ones whose skill sets skew more towards offense. Under head coach Frank Vogel, however, the Lakers have won with a culture of defensive intensity and commitment. Do the Lakers have enough defense this season? Can Anthony Davis and LeBron continue to set the tone on that end? Can Russ turn his focus up to be better? Will this team simply care enough to defend hard if they're as good on offense as they expect to be? Pete, Mike, and Darius answer these questions and more when examining the Lakers defensive potential.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What do you think about the Laker team now? |
| 0:03.4 | You follow the box scores of the games every day? |
| 0:06.0 | Just the Lakers. |
| 0:07.3 | You're kidding. |
| 0:08.6 | That is really a compliment. |
| 0:12.8 | I was pleased to see you smile at the top bar show because once the game starts, you have a game face. |
| 0:17.8 | You don't smile much out there. |
| 0:20.4 | I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. |
| 0:22.9 | Correct. |
| 0:23.6 | What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Filmroom podcast, brought to you by the Blue Wire Podcast Network. I'm Pete, joined by Darius and Mike. And the dust is settled, right? We've got a great degree of roster turnover. And whenever the team changes this much, the first place that my mind goes to, and I think all fans go to, is like, what are we? What is this new team? What are we capable of? How are we different than last year? And some off-season, it's you add a couple of pieces. You make a couple of different changes, but you still kind of know what the team is going to be this offseason there's been |
| 0:56.0 | such a severe roster overturn that again it's all these new factors coming into play and so in |
| 1:02.6 | the last few weeks of thinking what is this team going to be my biggest anxiety is probably |
| 1:08.3 | do we have enough defense now this has been a staple of the last |
| 1:14.4 | couple of years, especially since Frank Vogel came and Anthony Davis especially came over, |
| 1:19.2 | where we are the best defense in the league. That's something that the Lakers, when the Lakers talk |
| 1:23.7 | about Lakers basketball, that's usually what they're referring to. So the dial has been |
| 1:29.2 | turned, Darius, very severely toward defense over the last couple of years. We've added ball handling, |
| 1:35.7 | we've added shooting, but I think that we've probably taken a step back on the defensive end in |
| 1:39.9 | terms of what the roster is capable of. Do you agree with that evaluation? And to what degree? We're not |
| 1:46.7 | going to answer that today, but we're just going to kind of explore the Lakers defense and our first |
| 1:52.1 | impressions of it. And will they be able to play enough of it to win a title? So yes, I definitely agree |
| 1:57.8 | that the team has skewed way more. |
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