Looking over the changes the Lakers made this offseason, it's hard to see how they're going to get better at that end. They could, in fact, be dramatically worse.
Although the Lakers' defensive number wasn't the worst in the league last season, it looked pretty awful in a historical context.
By Andrew Lynch's Adjusted DRTG+, which compares a team's defensive efficiency to the league average for that season (essentially accounting for the style of play in different eras), last year's Lakers had the 87th-worst defense of the past 41 years. 87th out of 1,073 team seasons over that time span puts last season's Lakers in the eighth percentile.
The problems were numerous, but most of them originated with the fact that the roster was largely devoid of good defensive players. The chart below shows everyone who played for the Lakers last season, marked by the defensive component of their Real Plus-Minus rating from ESPN.
Real Plus-Minus is an estimate of a player's impact to his team's defense, per 100 possessions, with a positive number representing a positive contribution. You can see from the graph that the Lakers employed just four positive defensive players last season—Chris Kaman, Pau Gasol, Xavier Henry and Robert Sacre.
None of those players has a particularly strong defensive reputation, but the numbers argue that they were the only ones providing anything at that end for the Lakers last year.
This offseason, the Lakers appeared focused on upgrading the general talent level of their roster as opposed to a specific focus on their defensive shortcomings. Several players from last season are out, including both Kaman and Gasol,...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
