Friedman was using the quote from Cleamons to attack a statement made by Kevin Pelton several months ago. In fact, if you actually read the piece on the Knicks you can see that he first posted that quote in December of last year.

That’s not to say that Cleamons’ comments on the Laker defense don’t still hold some validity today, but the fact is that Friedman was not posting about that subject at all. Yet for some reason Abbott digs through the whole piece and decides to quote that part only. Interesting.

I do find it somewhat odd, however, that Henry (or whoever it was that wrote it) took that bit of insight from Jim Cleamons from an article that actually had nothing to do with the Lakers at all (Friedman was writing about the Knicks), then made a piece about the Lakers out of it.

So I’m not crazy, Cleamons’ quote has certified my assessment of this season’s D. The only question is how many bad losses or playoff exits will it take before we quit mimicking the Suns and stop making excuses for playing bad defense? This reg season’s d has actually been worse than last year. I could’ve sworn the mission for this season was to be better on D.

I mentioned this a while back, but after reading Jim Cleamons’ comments it popped back in my head- the Lakers play a defensive scheme that is equivalent to paint by numbers. The coaches are telling players exactly where they need to be in help situations rather than letting them figure those things out for themselves. It’s the reason why we double the post against players who may not be strong scoring threats. It’s why we shift into our SSZ when the ball handler is in a position to be a penetrator. It’s why we extend into traps on the wing when the player with the ball is in a position to hurt us with the ball. These are all situations where the coaches think we are vulnerable and want us to be in better positions as helpers. Ultimately we’re trying to compensate for the fact that our players are not instinctive enough to play the defensive scenario well enough for the result to be something successful. So, like paint by numbers, the staff has laid out what they (the players) should do on any given possession beforehand so all they do is fill in the part of the picture with the proper color. Understand though, that while this scheme is meant to limit our weaknesses, it’s also meant to play to our strengths- length and quickness. We have players that *should* be able to show help on the strong side while still recovering to the weakside to contest shooters. We have players that can trap on the strong side while still recovering to the paint to rebound when the players are rotating to the opposite side of the court. I agree with Coach Cleamons though, we need to bring that effort to rotate on defense in the manner that the scheme requires. Because if we don’t we will be in trouble.

You can bet that there will be a lot of eyeballs on this year’s Nike Hoop Summit. Top US high school seniors vs the Top high school seniors from the rest of the world. Guys like Dirk, Tony Parker and Derek Rose played in it before they got drafted.

Yahoo Sports is doing a live webcast of the game on April 11th. Hopefully I will be watching the next great Laker.

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-38-364/How-the-Lakers-Play-Defense.html

Coach Cleamons talks about the lack of defensive intensity night in and night out and how that is characteristic in champion teams.