Here are my early observations after watching every second of every Laker game this year (and pretty much every game of the last 5 years) with potential solutions.

- This team is very bad at rebounding. This is because our guards (Prince, Reaves, DLO) pretty much give us nothing there, and Bron is too old to give a ton of effort. Vando coming back should help a little, but this is something that we need to fix (either by staggering the guards or going bigger more often).

- When the Lakers go big, we are much better defensively. Wood, AD, Bron have the highest 3-man +/- (+56) out of our entire team since the season started.

- Outside of Lebron, this team severely lacks the ability to attack the paint. DLO/Reaves are jump shot addicts. This is problematic when our shots are not falling. This is where we miss Shroeder.

- The only ones that can feed AD well are DLO and Lebron. This leads to long periods of “Wtf is AD doing” during games because he doesn’t touch the ball. This is also why we miss Rondo. AD would greatly benefit from a post game. Reaves needs to get better at playmaking out of the pick n roll to get AD the ball.

- Lebron starting the 4th is leading to him playing large minutes. We can solve this problem a bit by just not starting him when the 4th starts. He can then play the final 8-9 minutes.

- Jackson Hayes is not very good.

- Gabe Vincent is a good POA defender, but his lack of size will hurt his ability to get big minutes.

- Cam Reddish is very good defensively. Very active hands, can get lost off-ball, but if he can hit 3s at a 35% clip, he will 100% be in the rotation.

- DLO is the same player he always is. Streaky. He has gotten better at playmaking for this team (which we desperately need), but he’s still not great defensively. He is probably the most expendable piece on this team out of everyone that gets big minutes.

- Our best 5, in most scenarios, should be Reaves, Prince, Bron, Rui, and AD. Occasionally, I could see us using Wood instead of Rui or Prince depending on the matchup.

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*This team is clearly a step below the best teams in the NBA (Denver, Boston, and probably even teams like Minnesota)

*Unless Reaves takes a huge leap forward, I see us falling short this year (even if everyone is healthy). With that being said, if the Lakers made a move at the deadline for someone like Lavine who can be average defensively, but also attack the paint + shoot, that could raise the ceiling of this team.