🏀 Xs & Os • Team & Agent Consulting • @The_BBall_Index Founder • Lakers Exceptionalism Pod
Hanging with models (the math ones)
Joined May 2012
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Walker Kessler is scoring 23.2 points per 100 possessions on-court for LA's half court offense.
That drops to 14.3 vs drop coverage, w/his scoring chances dropping from 16.1 to 11.9 per 100 when facing drop.
His assist output nearly triples đź‘€
From my new tracking dashboard!
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Here's a full season example for Luka from a year ago
Opponents drop/switch = Luka the scorer. More FTs drawn vs switching though.
Opponents hedge/blitz = Luka the passer. Fewer Luka points, more TOs, WAY more assists.
How is Austin Reaves getting involved in the offense as a scorer?
It depends what kind of defense the team is facing.
I've got this data for every player each of the last 3 seasons in the new scheme dashboard.
If you want more Tim & Tom content, our Discord server is the place to be.
Example: with 24 bonus pods since the start of the regular season, that's an extra pod every ~2 games.
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Cranjis McBasketball retweeted
With our Talent Age Growth Curve Model we can project how a players skill will age.
Here's how Cooper Flagg's Overall Shooting Talent projects
-Shooting Talent takes into account how well a player shoots relative to shot quality + volume + shot creation
Translation: this is the #1/#2 best game the Lakers have attacked drop coverage under Redick.
They were basically unstoppable when they won the 🪨, 📄, ✂️ game vs drop.
And did so on the back of a concept I’ve been hoping to see spammed that finally got spammed.
LA's 65% Coverage Fit vs Drop was done 0 times in 2025-26 and once in 2024-25 when facing drop 25%+ of the time as the major coverage in a possession.
This game LA had a 150 ORtg on those plays.
LA running Stack 13 times was a high in any of JJ's 199 coached games.
Lakers game 3 half court offensive flow vs Utah, per my tracking dashboard.
The Lakers sets flambeed Utah's drop. The freelance P&R offense didn't quite work as well.
Thankfully we saw a 67% Organized Offense Rate from LA, a number the team hit just 2 times last regular season.
LA uses a standard Stack hand motion to call the concept out.
Keep an eye out for it, then look for the stack man starting under the rim and look for the back screen (stack up), down screen (stack down), or roll & replace (stack replace) as the major variants.
The Lakers generated 1.30 expected points per possession running various stack sets in the 1st half vs Utah.
4 open shots and 2 rim shooting fouls drawn on 8 plays.
They ran it to open Q3 and drew a foul. Then ran it 0 more times the rest of Q3 for whatever reason... Why???
What am I supposed to log this as??
The most derailed I get when logging plays is when plays like this happen.
I've logged 16,908 half court offensive possessions for JJ Redick's Lakers so far.
There have been just 2 instances where the team ran the exact same set play 4 times in a row on 4 consecutive possessions.
Late Q4 in G4 against OKC last playoffs, then yesterday against Utah.
Both 1) the ball placement on this pass & 2) the no dip shot are insane
Also, Utah's in drop coverage and STILL has to tag Kessler hard to prevent the lob. This 3-pointer isn't there without that roll gravity.
A normal pro of drop is not needing to leave shooters to tag. Kessler's a scheme buster.
LA played a team mixing between drop and deep drop that was crashing off shooters to tag rollers hard whenever needed.
Same formula a year ago that drove volume to Luka/AR, prevented ORebs, & eliminated LA’s centers from scoring volume (other than Ayton midrange pops).
I’m not concerned. This will continue to happen and it’s just basketball.
Williams being a guy that can hit 3s off motion like this is a step up from the stationary shooter types.
Good work by Thybulle with a quick pass and LaRavia with the drive, each extending the advantage.
Against a lot of drop from Utah tonight we saw volume shift heavily to Luka and Austin, as expected.
Heading into tonight LA had faced a plurality of hedging/blitzing. Big shift in coverages faced tonight.
Those guys cooking (& some good sets helped) was the remedy.
From my tracking tool: Here's when each Lakers player is getting involved as scorers (left) and passers (right) based on which coverage opponents are playing
AR/Luka become passers vs hedging/blitzing.
Kessler's seen real short roll volume vs both drop and hedging/blitzing.
Mamu & Williams as off-ball finishers have only gotten scoring chances when the D is in rotation hedging/blitzing.
In the clutch tonight we've mostly seen LA run these Chest flare sets to get Luka an advantage OR to get him a clearout with the defense having some movement to defend, delaying them sending extra help by just long enough for him to take advantage.