The Los Angeles Lakers have been a machine on offense this season. They’re 17-6 and near the top of the Western Conference, despite LeBron James and Luka Doncic each missing significant time. They’re the sixth-best offense overall in the Association, averaging 118.2 points per 100 possessions. And in the last two weeks, they’ve put up a whopping 124.7 points per 100 possessions, fourth-best in the league.
The ridiculous part? There is nothing unique or mind-blowing about what they’re doing.
They know what their players are good at; they have the requisite personnel to allow their stars to thrive and no matter the coverage, they have been impossible to stop.
It’s like that quote from Bruce Lee: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Well, the Lakers have one kick, and it’s very, very hard and well-practiced.
Keeping It Simple
Their kick comes in the form of a single play that nearly everyone in the NBA uses: the pick-and-roll.
The Lakers rank in the 90th percentile in pick-and-roll frequency, with only the Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards running it more often. The difference is, they score out of that action more than anybody, putting up 1.07 points per possession, ranking in the 97th percentile in the NBA.
Doncic and his backcourt partner, Austin Reaves, dice up teams in these moments. Doncic is leading the league in points, putting up 35 a night on 62 percent true shooting, while nearly averaging a triple-double with 9.2 rebounds and 9.1 assists.
He’s been the best pick-and-roll player in the NBA. Including passes, he Lakers score 1.153 points per possession when he’s in these actions. Doncic is legitimately unstoppable in the paint with his size, strength and soft touch. He’s shooting an absurd 60 percent on runners and 80 percent on layups to start the year.
Reaves, for his part, has been almost just as dominant, averaging a career-best 28.4 points per game on a blistering 67.3 percent true shooting and averaging a career-high 6.7 assists a night. Like Doncic, Reaves is cooking teams in pick-and-rolls and both do an excellent job of getting to the free-throw line, where, as a duo, they take over 20 free throws per game.
But it takes two to tango and the Lakers have paired Doncic and Reaves with Deandre Ayton most frequently in these actions. He deserves a mention, too, because the big man is shooting 70 percent from the field this season, a career-best by a long shot. Doncic and Reaves make his life easy, finding him on dump-off passes and using their gravity as scorers to give him an extra window of time to finish on the interior.
It’s worked like a charm.
But like an onion, this thing has many layers.
The amount of attention Reaves, Doncic and Ayton receive in their unstoppable action creates easy, wide-open opportunities for their teammates.
A typical Lakers action starts with a pick-and-roll. Doncic or Reaves will assess their options as scorers and if nothing shakes out, they use that gravity to create shots for Rui Hachimura, LeBron James, Marcus Smart, Jake LaRavia and others.
The Lakers score 1.095 points per possession on spot-ups, ranking in the 80th percentile. Hachimura, in particular, is shooting a blistering 46 percent on threes this season.
Doncic and Reaves also create lots of 4-on-3 opportunities because defenses will often send two to the ball against them. And there might not be a more well-suited playmaker in NBA history in these situations than James, who consistently makes the right plays and finds his teammates.
Perhaps, the best example of this occurred Thursday against the Toronto Raptors, which blitzed Reaves in the dying seconds of the game. That forced help to collapse and James was able to make a play in the open floor, setting up Hachimura in the corner for a buzzer-beating game-winner.
RUI HACHIMURA GAME WINNER!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/8xGhEqKGvy
— Lakers Empire (@LakersEmpire) December 5, 2025
It’s an easy, quick-to-make recipe. And it’s flat-out unstoppable at this point.
A Higher Ceiling
The wildest part is the Lakers can be even better offensively. James just got introduced into the fold. He’ll find new wrinkles to add and will get his fair share of pick-and-roll opportunities as well.
He showed just how effectively he can play off of Reaves and Doncic with his dominant 29-point outing during a road win over the Philadelphia 76ers Sunday night.
The rich get richer. And in an NBA where teams are constantly looking for new creative edges in how they win games, the Lakers are trusting good ol’ Rusty (in this case, the pick-and-roll) to carry them to dominance.
And it’s working.
The rest of the NBA is feeling the pain of the kick that was practiced 1000 times.
