Why The New-Look Los Angeles Lakers Can’t Stop Winning

When the Los Angeles Lakers traded Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic, the basketball world applauded them for their heist of the century. However, when it happened, I (like many others) questioned the short-term outlook, citing LeBron James’ age, his fit alongside Luka Doncic, and defense as my primary concerns.

So far, the Lakers have proven these claims to be unsubstantiated, winning their last six games and 12 of 14 overall in the ways their naysayers did not deem possible. At 38-21, they’ve climbed to second in the West and just wrapped up an 8-0 February against teams above .500.

Now 40 years old, James continues pushing the bounds of what was previously thought to be humanely possible. Together, he and Doncic have posted a net rating already better than the one had with Davis. And most importantly, the Lakers have somehow improved on defense, despite losing their all-time interior stalwart.

Defense Wins Championships

James’ superhuman existence and his synergy alongside his European ancestor deserve further examination. However, the main focus needs to be the Lakers’ defense. Over their last 12 games, they have the NBA’s second-best defensive rating, trailing only the upstart Detroit Pistons. But how have they done it?

The Stars Are Setting The Tone

When I made my declaration about the team’s immediate limitations, I made two major miscalculations. The first was underestimating how much of defense, even at the professional level, is predicated on effort.

This Lakers’ team is fully bought in on that side of the floor. They communicate, they rotate, they box out and nail plenty of other crucial details like those ones. Everyone who gets consistent minutes seems to thoroughly understand the game plan and is committed to executing it, and all of this starts with the stars.

James, a player famous for using cruise control on defense in the regular season, has vastly ramped up his intensity over the last month and some change. Look at this graphs from Dunks & Threes cataloguing his game-to-game Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus throughout the season:

Meanwhile, Doncic, often maligned for his defensive capabilities and effort, is properly walling off drives in semi-transition.

When two players of James and Doncic’s magnitude are willing to exert themselves like that, it’s hard for anyone else to whine and complain.

JJ Redick Is Flourishing As Head Coach

The second misstep I made was forgetting how much of defense is predicated on game plan and scheme. Despite plenty of criticism and skepticism upon being hired as head coach, JJ Redick is proving to be pretty damn good at his job.

DFS post-game: Coaches have been giving us the answers to the test [on defense] and we've been executing.

— Lakers Exceptionalism Podcast (@LakersExPod) March 3, 2025

Redick brings fresh perspective and a willingness to push the envelope. The most extreme example is the unprecedented approach he took to slowing down three-time MVP Nikola Jokic in Los Angeles’ rout of the Denver Nuggets last month (to learn more about that, check out this wonderful Thinking Basketball video).

But even less drastic than this one-off strategy he deployed, Redick has introduced smart little wrinkles playing to the Lakers’ strengths and help hide their weaknesses.

For instance, they like to storm the paint and overload the strong-side (whichever part of the court the basketball is on). This allows them to use their length and side-to-side agility to shrink the floor. It also masks their lack of individual rim protection since it’s no longer one person expected to primarily do the job in Davis. Instead, it’s a team-wide responsibility.

Of course, selling out to protect the inside leaves one vulnerable to a barrage of threes. To try and neutralize this effect, Redick has instructed the team to be more ambitious in their pursuit of turnovers. In the last nine games (when Doncic officially debuted), the Lakers are fifth in the NBA in opponent turnover percentage, per NBA.com. They were 21st in this category before his arrival.

Again, this lets the Lakers to leverage their speed while minimizing the risks often associated with their general philosophy. After all, you can’t get beat by the three-ball if the other team is turning it over before they even have a chance to shoot!

Unsung Heroes

Jarred Vanderbilt, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jaxson Hayes all deserve some flowers for their play. Vanderbilt’s ability to cover ground and create chaos (95th percentile in steal rate) has been a major reason the Lakers can operate the way they do. Finney-Smith’s versatility and switchability makes their small-ball lineups tenable. And Hayes has done an admirable job as the rim-running (97th percentile rim accuracy), shot-blocking (92nd percentile block rate) center this team desperately needed once the Mark Williams deal fell through.

Still Some Questions

The Lakers deserve a serious tip of the cap. When this trade was initially conceived, I did not think they would be anything more than a tough first-round opponent. This recent stretch has shown otherwise, but it does not mean they are beyond questioning.

For starters, like I stated above, Vanderbilt has been a key ingredient in their winning recipe. As it stands, the Lakers’ second-highest on-off net rating swing belongs to him, behind only Finney-Smith, per Cleaning the Glass. However, in the past, he’s been phased out of playoff matchups because of his offensive limitations. What happens to this defense if they can’t unleash their Tasmanian Devil on opponents in a postseason series?

The other question mark here revolves around how much Lakers are sacrificing their perimeter defense to protect the paint. It isn’t foreign for a defense to have vulnerabilities and many teams make the tradeoff of selling out to safeguard the paint and mitigate point-of-attack shortcomings. But so far, the Lakers haven’t really had to face the consequences of their actions.

During their last 12 games, they have the fourth-lowest opponent 3-point percentage (32.8 percent), but concede the third-highest rate of threes to teams over that span (42.7 percent). As we know, opponent 3-point success is largely rooted in luck. So, the Lakers’ defense has been getting at least a little bit of help from the basketball gods. What happens if that good fortune changes?

The new-look Lakers are dangerous and winning in a manner I never thought possible, given the constraints of their current roster. However, questions like the two I posed above make me hesitant to add them to the inner circle of title contenders just yet. Even then, they’ve clearly established themselves as a team primed to possibly make serious noise this spring and that’s more than I expected a month ago.