The Lakers big three is still searching for chemistry

Regardless of where any of us fell on the spectrum of belief that the Lakers could actually be a championship contender this season, we could all agree that their most realistic path to reaching that status would be on the offensive side of the ball.

Sure, they added some free agents who could help bolster their defense, but those players were never going to tip the scales so severely to catapult the team into the upper echelons of the league on that side of the ball.

No, if the Lakers were going to win — and win big — they’d do it by being such a force on the offensive side of the ball that opponents wouldn’t be able to keep pace.

Despite a record that has them 10 games over .500 on the season and one of the 10 best records in the league heading into Friday’s games, the Lakers have not been the offensive juggernaut one might expect, even when contextualizing that record through the lens of all the injuries the team has had this season.

Yes, the Lakers, currently 11th in offensive rating, have been mostly a top-10 offense all year and have been particularly strong at the end of close games, where they’re the best clutch offense in the league. But hovering around 10th while boasting a great finishing kick is not the same as outpacing opponents over the course of full games and making every sort of defense pay.

Which brings us to the big three of Luka Dončić, LeBron James and Austin Reaves. Any shortcomings on that side of the ball rightfully put them squarely in the crosshairs. This team is built around their offensive prowess and the idea that together, and when staggered into different lineup groupings, they’d be able to lift the Lakers over the course of a full 48 minutes to put the screws to any defense in the league.

Indvidually, while things have not always been perfect — see the end of the team’s loss against the Magic on Tuesday — all three have mostly been holding up their end of the bargain.

Luka is leading the league in scoring and is third in assists while boasting shooting percentages in line with his career marks from the field overall, behind the arc and at the foul line. He remains a top-five MVP candidate and is on pace to make another All-NBA First Team.

Austin Reaves, meanwhile, is having the best statistical season he’s had in his 5-year career, scoring 25 points and dishing out over five assists a night while shooting 50% from the field, 37% from behind the arc, and 87% from the foul line. Before his calf injury cost him over a month, Austin was on pace to make his first All-Star game.

LeBron’s production is not where it’s been in recent seasons, but he’s still scoring nearly 22 points and handing out seven assists a game, is shooting 50% from the field and, after a slow start, is back to 75% from the foul line.

Besides raw points per game, the only real decline he’s shown statistically on offense is from behind the arc where he’s shooting just 30% from deep after consecutive seasons that saw him hit 37% and 41%. But, even disregarding his age, the only player averaging as many points and assists as him while shooting as well from the field overall is Nikola Jokic.

However, when they’ve shared the court as a trio this season, things have not always lined up.

This season, the NBA’s worst offense is the Indiana Pacers, who have an offensive rating of 108.7. To put this number into context, it’s a full 12 points per 100 possessions worse than the league’s best offense, the Nuggets. When the trio of Dončić, James, and Reaves share the floor, the Lakers’ offense is just 106.7, two points worse than the bottom-dwelling Pacers.

Should this be a huge cause for concern? Well….yes and no.

It’s pretty clear that when these three share the floor, there’s a replication of skill sets and not yet much chemistry on how to elevate each other through the natural way each of them likes to play. When the team is not running organized sets or specific plays, there can be a tendency to play too much standard pick-and-roll or isolation basketball where one of the Luka, Bron or Reaves just commandeers the possession while the other stars stagnate.

This can often lead to one- or no-pass possessions where LeBron might get a post-up and look to bully his man in the paint or Luka/Austin simply call for a ball screen that turns into a fairly predictable outcome where either they shoot themselves or the player they pass to shoots.

There are also countless freelance possessions a game where one of the three — and it’s Dončić who does this the most — will hunt their own offense early in the shot clock without making a single pass at all. How many times have you seen Luka take an early clock stepback three when both LeBron and Austin are in the game?

And while he has the ball the most and can be singled out, it’s not just Luka who can play on an island in this way. Again, just as I can see in my mind’s eye Luka taking that early clock three, I can envision Austin dribbling up high and calling for a pick so he can go into his dance and try to get a shot up for himself. Or I can visualize LeBron dribbling above the break and going into a backdown of his defender to try to post up, only to take a contested fadeaway.

They all have this tendency and it’s too baked into the culture of freelancing on offense by relying on the individual greatness of a singular shot creator. And these sorts of actions don’t do much to elevate the other stars on the court who don’t have the ball, as they often end up watching their teammate go and try to cook the defense.

On the flip side, heading into Thursday’s game in Phoenix, the sample size for these three playing together this season is not yet very big at just 213 minutes. Further, 94 of the 213 minutes this trio has played come from the original starting lineup head coach JJ Redick deployed with Deandre Ayton and Rui Hachimura flanking his three stars. This group has posted a particularly abysmal offensive rating of 97.6 in those minutes, drastically underperforming the offensive talent on the floor.

There is a longer discussion to be had about why this group isn’t meshing, but putting that to the side for a moment, there are a couple of lineups where by simply making a single substitution — either swapping out Rui for Marcus Smart like the team has of late in the new starting lineup or, alternatively, Ayton for Jaxson Hayes — where the five on the floor are considerably better offensively and perform much closer to expectations:

• Austin, Smart, Luka, LeBron, Ayton: 55 minutes, 117.1 offensive rating
• Austin, Luka, Rui, LeBron, Hayes: 22 minutes, 117.8 offensive rating

These numbers mirror what the Lakers did with all three on the floor last season, where the team posted a 117.8 offensive rating, which was buoyed mostly by the team’s small-ball look where those three were flanked by Rui and Dorian Finney-Smith. Those groups posted a 124.9 offensive rating, which is a hint that the team might have more small-ball looks in its future now that everyone is healthy.

Heading into the Suns game, surrounding the team’s big three with Smart and Rui has led to a 132.0 offensive rating — though only in 12 minutes. Not a sizable enough sample to latch onto as meaningful, but in line with the team’s success last year in a similar lineup construction.

So, is the glass half-empty or half-full? I guess it depends on the night and how generous you want to be towards the team.

I could argue that, despite those two straight losses against Boston and Orlando that both left a sour taste in our mouths (and a third against the Suns on Thursday), the Lakers have a couple of lineups they can turn to that, even if it’s only small margins, are showing they can be successful together when the team has its three best players on the court together.

Those groups still aren’t scoring to the level they could be, but with better commitment to running more organized offense rather than freelancing, the team has shown it can be a high-functioning half-court offense that puts defenses in situations with few good choices.

That said, there’s also an argument to be made that this team has not shown a proclivity to commit to playing that way at all. There’s also an open question of whether health will permit the team to play these better-fitting lineups together as consistently as needed and whether Redick will even lean into those lineups to the degree that the small data samples imply he should.

Sticking with the lineup point a bit further, of all the combinations of the Lakers’ three stars, there are not many variations that have shown to be a net positive this year. When any of the Dončić, LeBron, or Austin trio play by themselves, the Lakers have a positive net rating.

But of the Dončić/Reaves, Dončić/James, and James/Reaves pairings when the other star is off the court, only the Luka and Austin duo have posted a positive net rating this season.

There’s an argument to be made, then, that instead of tethering Austin and LeBron in the way he does to start the second and fourth quarters, Redick could lean more into exploiting the Luka and Austin duo while forming a more athletic and defensive-oriented lineup around LeBron, as was the case when Reaves was out with his calf injury.

Whatever decisions are made, though, need to happen now. Coming out of the All-Star break is a massive sprint to the finish line where the playoffs are the ultimate goal. Injuries have not allowed the team to get the footing through information gathering it would have liked, but the race does not stop so that you can get your bearings.

The Lakers do not have the time to falter or linger on ideas that have not yet panned out. Here’s hoping they can find their way and do it now. Because if they don’t, they’ll have a very long offseason to consider where they went wrong…again.

You can follow Darius on BlueSky at @forumbluegoldand find more of his Lakers coverage on the Laker Film Room Podcast.