Kobe Bryant placed “stability” atop his Lakers wish list. Coach Mike D’Antoni wants his point guard, Steve Nash, back in good health. But center Dwight Howard trumped them both, asking for his teammates to watch his surgically repaired back on defense.
After the Lakers put on an awful defensive effort in their 116-107 loss to the Knicks at the Garden last night, Howard’s hope seemed the most meaningful.
“We have to help each other,” Howard said. “Just because I’m a good defensive player doesn’t mean I can do it all by myself. Everybody has to help on defense. You can’t just expect me to be everywhere at all times. It’s team defense.”
Well, the Lakers did it as a team last night, especially early. They all vanished on defense. The Knicks shot 73.9 percent in the first quarter, scored 41 points. The Lakers have surrendered 100 points in seven of their last eight games.
“I can’t contest a shot and get the rebound and block out my man. It takes a whole team. If we don’t understand that, that’s not on me. … We have to do that as a team, we have to rotate, we have to help each other,” Howard, the three-time defensive player of the year, claimed.
“The biggest thing is rotations. Guys got to know I’m going always go and try to block shots, do things a lot of guys in my position might not try to do and they have to have my back,” Howard said.
So take a team with bad defense that is still adjusting to a coaching change and you’ve got a mess. Saw it last night. And Howard getting in foul trouble early didn’t help. Neither did Carmelo Anthony threatening Wilt Chamberlain’s one-game scoring record in the first quarter alone.
“We had trouble in the first half in pick-and-rolls, we tried to stay with shooters. They’re a hard team to guard,” said coach Mike D’Antoni. “We made some adjustments at halftime and switched some and tried to slow it down, and exploited it a little bit. But we were able to score enough to kind of get back in the game —- we didn’t get totally back in it, but we made a run at it. Guys are playing hard, we just have things to keep working on, transition over, and try to get out of this, obviously, slump. And just go forward.”
And maybe defend along the way.
A start could be the return of health. Howard still is not 100 percent after back surgery. Nash suffered a broken fibula in the second game. Pau Gasol has been out since Nov. 30 with knee tendinitis. Nash is the guy D’Antoni craves most.
“We thought it was going to be a marriage made in heaven because Nash is going to run it [offense],” D’Antoni said. “Well, I haven’t seen him yet.”