L.A. Lakers’ Roster a Horrible Fit for Mike D’Antoni’s Break-Neck Tempo

For the most part, the offensive system of the Lakers has been the center of attention ever since Phil Jackson came to Los Angeles. Perhaps it's because they've had an offense with a "name" more often than not (Phil's Triangle, Mike Brown's Princeton, Rudy Tomjanovic's modified Hawk, Frank Hamblen's Hambone Special. One of those may or may not be made up.), which always made it more identifiable.

People can talk in length about Phil Jackson and the Triangle Offense, or even the merits of the Princeton Offense, but it's kind of hard to pinpoint the offensive scenarios surrounding someone like Frank Vogel or Keith Smart unless you watch the plays they run and dissect them individually.

The Triangle is wing and post-heavy. The Princeton is guard-heavy with ball movement and off-ball screens.

Naturally the next guy the Lakers hired would have to have a highly-identifiable offense, and no offense in the past few seasons is as identifiable and as controversial as the one that Mike D'Antoni runs.

Call it the seven-seconds-or-less offense, or just classify it as a run'n'gun offense that focuses heavily on the pick-and-roll. The point is that it's an offense the casual basketball fan has heard of, but most likely has an opinion of.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether or not this Lakers team is going to fit in with the D'Antoni vision.

What D'Antoni needs more than anything else from his players is for them to constantly run, which means everybody has to be in tip-top shape. For guys like Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace and Dwight Howard I can't possibly see that being a problem, although it might be a problem that Bryant and World Peace are as old as they are.

Dwight Howard's comments on D'Antoni's offense sum it all up pretty well:

Dwight Howard on the new up-tempo style expected under D'Antoni --- "We got a lot of old guys, so we gotta get in shape..."
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