Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers-Rockets Game 6. Should JJ Redick EXPAND ROTATION? Nick Smith Jr. Scoring Option?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Has J.J. Reddick shorten the rotation too much? Does he have a secret weapon sitting on the bench? At least one of us says maybe. That's next. You are Locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Lockedon Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for checking out Locked on Lakers.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Brian Komeneski, Andy Kaminoski, Big Game 6. Tonight in Houston, Lakers, looking to close things. out third time Andy is it going to be a charm i hope so because i don't want to i don't want to the stress of a fourth time it's a lot it's a lot much don't want it you think it's a lot on the players think about us yeah what of the podcasters andy um want to let people know that today's uh episode it's brought to you by fandul uh right now new customers can bet just five and get $250 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Head to fandule.com to get started.

Starting point is 00:01:08 So one of the trends that is both common with the Lakers in J.D. Reddix two years, but quite frankly, pretty common across the playoff landscape. Playoff rotations tend to start tighter than a regular season rotation, which makes some sense because the stakes are a little bit higher. Also, as series, go on when you get you know past game two three four five you start gaming again five six so the rotations sometimes get even shorter um your bench players that are playing play fewer minutes that is to say the least the trend for the lakers over the last couple games j j reddick really

Starting point is 00:01:47 tightening things up yeah i mean we're seeing it a lot by the way on the houston side as well the five starters for houston all played 31 minutes or more in the case of tarry isson who played only 31. That was foul trouble as opposed to strategy by Ime Adoka. He played three other guys, 18 minutes or fewer. Again, I think a lot of their minutes were dictated by Tarisan's foul trouble. In the case of the Lakers, six guys played 31 minutes or more, including Austin Reeves in his first game back. And then you have three guys, 10 minutes or fewer, Jackson with Jackson Hayes with 10, Jake LaRavion, 9, Jared Vanderbilt, 6. we thought would be the case, Brony James out of the rotation with Austin back.

Starting point is 00:02:34 Yeah, and I wasn't expecting somebody like Jared Vanderbilt, for example, to play 20 minutes a night, but you thought he might get more than six. And he has to some, you know, the,

Starting point is 00:02:44 some of it is, I think, sort of the trend, the trending of it. You know, in the case of Jake La Ravia, it's, you know,

Starting point is 00:02:51 the trend is his play hasn't been very good. He's just not, he's not playing well. And, you know, it's very difficult, it's very challenging to give players who are

Starting point is 00:03:01 really struggling a lot of minutes in the playoffs, especially when they're not, you know, LeBron's struggles, he's going to play 40 minutes tonight because he's LeBron and what else you're going to do? Reeves, you know, not on the injury report. He's going to start on Friday. He's going to play

Starting point is 00:03:18 40 minutes. If his body lets him, and he's, you know, he's up for the, up for the task, he's going to play 40 minutes, whether he's 11 of 20, you know, 11 of 20 or 5 of 20. He's going to play those minutes. That doesn't hold true for somebody like

Starting point is 00:03:34 Laravia. It doesn't hold true for somebody like Vanderbilt, both of whom have been also kind of victimized by the team's biggest problem in this city being offense, not defense. If they were getting lit up like a Christmas tree,

Starting point is 00:03:50 you might see those guys playing more. That's not the issue. The issues they can't score. Well, this gets back to the 2023 playoffs where Jared Vanderville, especially against the Denver series in the Western Conference finals, and there was a line of thought that Vando was getting played out of the series. And my thought was always, no, Vando isn't getting played out of the series as much as the other guys are taking Vando off the court.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Everybody stopped making shots. And those guys can't go off the court because you still need the possibility of them scoring, but then the guys who you really feel like, no, really, they're not going to score. That's not even why you would put them on the floor in the first place. They're the ones that start losing time in the rotation. And I think we're seeing that right now with Vando, with Laravia, with Jackson Hayes. The matchup isn't great for Hayes on top of it, particularly if Shangoon is playing a lot, the last few games.

Starting point is 00:04:50 Shangoon, if nothing else, has figured out how to play when defended by Jackson Hayes. I think Aiton has still been quite effective against him, but Hayes is a riddle that Chengoon's figured out, and there's a premium right now on scoring. The Lakers need to find sources of scoring somewhere, and Vando, La Ravia, and Hayes don't feel like obvious candidates for it. No, I mean, like Hayes, for example, offensively, can only really do one thing,

Starting point is 00:05:20 and if that one thing either isn't available or, you know, tougher to come by, which is, you know, lob and, you know, score that way. I guess three-pointers. It didn't miss a three in the regular season. So let's not sell them short there. But like if those things aren't available, you know, Jackson offers less utility, whereas Aiton is, you know, has been an effective screen and roll partner, but you can also pop him out to the elbow and he can hit on the short roll and, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:49 a little pop and so he's just got a lot more versatility to his game. You know, Vanderbilt and La Ravia, like, I get what you're saying. Like, they're, they're not being played off the court in the sense that, like, you know, in the way that people sort of commonly talk about it. But their lack, total lack of skill set on that one side of the ball is playing them off the court. They're not struggling. They're not struggling within their wheelhouse. The problem is the whole wheel is falling apart. They're just too specific.

Starting point is 00:06:20 I mean, it's right. Right. Exactly. It's too, it's, you know, Vando is a tricky proposition. but you just you can't have too many non-scores on the floor at the same time la ravia at least has of those three guys is the guy most likely to be able to put up a decent offensive performance but he's he is in a bad way and from a shooting standpoint it's been in a bad way for now really most of the season you can't play five guys well you can't but we learn you shouldn't well they're going to play

Starting point is 00:06:49 six there's six guys the five starters in canard i don't expect any of those guys smart to not play real minutes no they're going to play 30s anywhere from 35 to 40 to 43 minutes depending on on the flow of the game um you know canard could play you know closer to 30 um and and you know aton who it's a little bit more matchup dependent and stuff like that but you're your three principals are going to play a ton ruy's going to play a ton um all that stuff so we'll you know we'll see and then you know where do the lakers get any production from that part of the roster, if they can get any at all. You, Andy, have an unconventional thought about this.

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Starting point is 00:11:05 with premium scores. They did get some decent fill-in minutes in Reeves' absence from Brony, which was a nice story earlier in the series. But of course, Reeves coming back kind of eats up those minutes. It's a little tricky to figure out where JJ Redick might go to generate something, change dynamic a little bit, but you have an idea. Well, I mean, first of all, like, you're looking for something specific because it's not just that you're not getting bench scoring. You're not getting scoring. Like, they're not getting enough consistent scoring, period, like even from the starters, much less the entire roster. So in trying to identify where you could maybe get some quick points, I think it could be worth trying Nick Smith Jr. for a shift. A, it's

Starting point is 00:11:54 basically why he's on the playoff roster to begin with, because when you didn't know when Austin was going to be back, and we still don't know when Luca was going to be back, the thought process was you could use another ball handler, but also you may need sources of scoring. That is what Nick Smith does. And so it's clear, I'm not looking for Nick Smith to get 15, 20 minutes, you know, to become part of the rotation. What I'm hoping for is that maybe you put him in there against Houston's reserves who they can defend, but what they don't do is score. So he can possibly outpace those guys if he can hit a few shots, maybe draw a couple of fouls, something like that, put him in for seven or eight minutes. He scores six points. That will feel like a booze.

Starting point is 00:12:41 boost. And that might actually be a big enough boost to help outpace what Houston has been doing. They're not really scoring much either. You had mentioned before, like, the idea of a secret weapon. And I know you're being facetious, but I'm looking to identify a problem. And if Nick Smith feels like a reach, to some degree, he is. But a few years ago, Lonnie Walker felt like a reach. Lonnie Walker had that one game against Golden State. We refer to as the Lonnie Walker game, the playoff game. He didn't really do much before that. He didn't really do much after that.

Starting point is 00:13:19 But for that one game, he provided what was desperately needed. And the Lakers, frankly, are desperate for scoring. Nick Smith Jr. is a desperate move. But it's not an illogical move. So that's why, and especially, too, with your primary guys, clearly dealing with some level of fatigue, you need to find somebody who can help offset that as well in addition to provide some of the scoring. So I would like to see JJ, particularly if after, say, the first quarter or so, there's still, the offense isn't quite clicking. I would be open to

Starting point is 00:13:58 giving him a shift and see how it looks. I will say this. I don't love the idea. I, I, I, I, Who said I loved it? True. It's not what I, it's not the, it's not the, the, the, the, the, the, the, we're not break the glass on the Nick Smith emergency, you know, fire alarm yet. I get what you're saying. And I think, you know, the underlying logic of it is, is, is sound in terms of like, diagnosing what the problem is, and trying to figure out ways to, to, to address. I don't think it's impossible. You could theorize, especially if Conard, for example, comes out cold or something like that.

Starting point is 00:14:44 You know, and his, I mean, he'll come off the bench. But if, you know, he's not looking comfortable, can't get it. Like, maybe you do get somebody with Smith versus Conard, not the shooter, but obviously much more handle is able to put the ball on the ground a little bit and try to get to the basket. I could see it. But I think, you know, what they, what it really gets to is this need, like they need to. like they need to find another way to score. Whether that's changing, whether that's changing the personnel,

Starting point is 00:15:15 and I just, and I say no to this idea as much because I just don't think Smith, you know, walking into game six against that defense is going to have very much success. And a lot can go wrong in six or seven or eight, you know, Nick Smith possessions or whatever. But they got to change something.

Starting point is 00:15:38 We talked about Kinnard at length for Friday's full show, the big show, and trying to figure out, okay, if Amman Thompson's going to spend a lot of time on them, well, we need to make Kinnard a credible threat here. So what can we do? Do we add complexity to our offball movements? Do we simplify our offball movements? Do we give Reeves space to get in the lane, you know, the picking rolls that were kind of effective, just simple basketball stuff and let our two stars kind of try to. cook. These are all the questions that they are figuring out, but they are not going to advance in this series if they can't find a way to score, particularly hits a freeze. So, Locked on Lakers on YouTube is we're going to go hang out with over 30,000 subscribers. We,

Starting point is 00:16:24 of course, will be back after the game, break it all down, hopefully breaking down Andy, a Lakers series win and getting ready for Oklahoma City. But either way, we'll be there.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers-Rockets Game 6. Should JJ Redick EXPAND ROTATION? Nick Smith Jr. Scoring Option?

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