Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we’ll take a deeper look at some of the league’s biggest storylines, trying to determine whether future trends are based more on fact or fiction.
last week: Jonathan Kuminga is a great basketball player
Fact or fiction: Lakers could build a championship team around Luka Doncicdefense
Every time you type “JJ Redick” into a search engine, you’ll see titles like: Lakers head coach slams team’s effortor, The latest attempt to solve the Los Angeles defense!
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“Look, my staff and I, our analytics team, that’s all we’re doing right now,” Redick told reporters after Tuesday’s 115-107 victory over the short-handed Denver Nuggets. “We’re trying to figure out the best way to defend this team and this team.”
We are at the midpoint of the season. (In fact, we’re approaching the one-year anniversary of Luka Doncic’s trade to the Los Angeles Lakers, who will face his former team on Saturday!)
That’s an improvement from last December, when Redick seemed to believe that no tactical adjustments could cure his defensive woes other than more effort from his players.
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“We practice this stuff enough,” he said after the loss to the Phoenix Suns. “We get enough scrutiny of these things. We get enough film screenings of these things that, to me, it comes down to … just making choices. It’s making choices. You can take the easy way out, or you can do the hard thing, you can make a second effort, or you can sprint back, or you can’t.”
Whether it’s the coaching staff’s plan or the players’ intentions, the fact remains: the Lakers’ defense is terrible. This season, they rank 25th among 30 teams, allowing 117.3 points per 100 possessions. The Lakers are 11-13 since the beginning of December, and they’re giving up 119.2 points per 100 possessions, ranking 29th on defense. Only the Utah Jazz, who have the worst defensive efficiency in NBA history, are worse than Los Angeles.
One of the reasons their defense is so bad: No one is more vulnerable than Doncic.
(Illustration by Hassan Ahmed/Yahoo Sports)
According to Synergy’s game type statistics, facing Doncic’s isolated defense, the team completed 2.2 possessions per game, the most in the league. Of course, this only takes into account the number of appearances the opponent has played Finish Against Doncic, it’s not necessarily the number of times he was hunted down in a game, but that gives us a good picture of the problem.
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(Tyler Herro ranks second behind Doncic in this regard, to give you an idea of its accuracy.)
Of course, another reason for their poor defense: They failed to surround Doncic with anyone capable of stopping the ball. Doncic’s co-stars LeBron James and Austin Reeves are not defensive stoppers. Deandre Ayton is not much of a rim protector at all.
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As Redick said after a recent loss, “I thought our post guys were terrible all night long.”
Marcus Smart may be the Lakers’ best option on offense, but the 31-year-old is four years and multiple injuries away from becoming the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year.
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“When we give up offensive rebounds in key moments like we are doing now, or guys are doing whatever they want on the floor, we really have no defense, no plan,” Smart admitted in December. “There’s no help, there’s no resistance, there’s no urgency. So, it’s tough. JJ is right: There’s really nothing he can do. It’s our responsibility.”
Our defense wasn’t good enough to win a championship.
That leads to the same question Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison posed this time last year: Can you build a championship around Doncic’s defense?
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Short answer: Of course. (Spoiler alert: Nico is wrong.)
Doncic, 24, leads the Mavericks to the 2024 NBA Finals alongside Kyrie Irving. Daniel Gafford, Derrick Jones Jr. and P.J. Washington are the other three starters. This team ranked 18th in defense during the regular season, not a strong one, and they were only three wins away from the championship. Build the right team around Doncic — a roster filled with two-way contributors — and it’s clear you can win a championship with him.
After all, he is one of the few best basketball players in the world, averaging a league-leading 33.4 points per game, along with 8.7 assists and 7.8 rebounds per night.
All of this now leads us to the question at hand: lakers Build a championship around Doncic? That’s a far more complicated question to answer, and not just because of the series of missteps their front office has made since winning the 2020 title. Then again, they did win the championship, they did get Doncic, and they did develop Reeves.
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(Ownership can also be confusing, but that’s a story for another day.)
The presence of James alongside Reeves and Doncic is a defensive issue. They are three of the most talented scorers in the game and three of the team’s best players, and the Lakers wish they were all on the floor, it’s just that they score a lower 7.4 points per 100 possessions, which is almost as bad as this year’s Washington Wizards in this situation.
Even if the 41-year-old phenom James has a frosty relationship with Lakers leadership (a report he didn’t outright deny on Thursday), the 41-year-old phenom has lost some progress on defense, but it will be very difficult for them to complete a deal before the February 5 trade deadline, especially one that gives them enough help defensively to compensate for the competition.
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However, he becomes a free agent after the season, and it’s becoming less and less surprising that James and the Lakers part ways this summer. In fact, according to Keith Smith of Spotrac, the team could clear up to $54 million in salary cap space in July.
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That gives the Lakers a chance — this summer — to sign Reeves to a contract close to his own max extension before he opts out of next season’s $15 million contract. Our question then becomes: Can the Lakers build a championship team around Doncic’s defense? and Reeves?
According to data from Cleaning the Glass, currently, when Doncic and Reeves are on the court without James, the Lakers outscore their opponents by 14.2 points per 100 meaningful possessions, with the offense at a historical level and the defense in the top three.
This is really encouraging. The idea, then: use the Mavericks’ blueprint, only have Reaves fill Irving’s role as Doncic’s partner, and find three two-way forces to play with them.
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Here’s the thing: The 2026 free agent class is a dud, at least as far as defensive stalwarts are concerned. Will 36-year-old Draymond Green decline his $27.7 million option for next season if Los Angeles waits for more money? Are the Lakers interested in oft-injured Robert Williams III?
More likely, the Lakers will have to get creative and try to trade players into their cap space, use their distant future draft picks as bait, and maybe even dangle Reeves if the return is right. Could they get someone like Trey Murphy III or Herb Jones, or both, from the New Orleans Pelicans? Every other team in the league is looking for the same 3-and-D wing.
So, our final question—a discussion for another day—is whether we think we’ve adequately answered the question at hand (the Lakers can build a championship around Doncic, of course; any team able): Is Rob Pelinka the executive the Lakers want?
The Lakers have a new owner, a team that didn’t hire Pelinka, and they will be motivated to win and spend money, especially after investing $10 billion in the team.
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Determination: Facts. The Lakers can build a championship team around Doncic. Just not this season. It’ll take time – maybe years – but the good news is they’ve done it. Doncic is 26 years old and his contract runs until the 2028-29 season. (Thanks againNico. )