LOS ANGELES — Nearly two weeks before the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Luka Dončić, coach JJ Redick emphasized the Lakers’ inability to generate easy offense by drawing double teams.
“We don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to necessarily always draw two to the ball,” Redick said on Jan. 19 after a 116-102 loss to the LA Clippers. “We don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to be able to get past his guy one-on-one and get to the paint and spread it out to the perimeter. Like, that’s just not our team.”
The Lakers, Redick felt, had a bit of a geometry problem.
For as great as LeBron James and Anthony Davis were, and for as much defensive attention they commanded, it wasn’t enough to consistently break defenses and generate the caliber of high-percentage open 3-pointers that the league’s best teams like Boston and Cleveland do.
And then the Lakers acquired Dončić.
The superstar is perhaps the preeminent pick-and-roll practitioner in the league. Most defenses send at least two defenders — if not more — to the ball when he receives a ball screen. And when they defend him that way, Dončić has an array of options to dissect them, from hitting the roller to finding a weak-side cutter or shooter to swinging the ball to the weak-side safety valve.
“People start learning that at some point in the game, they’re going to double-team me,” Dončić said after the Lakers’ 125-109 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Monday. “Like, always I accept that and I like playing that. It saves my energy. And, we just get to play four-on-three. I think guys are doing great out of that.”
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That defensive attention has only increased with James out of the lineup over the past five games with a left groin strain. But it hasn’t mattered, because Dončić is playing his best basketball as a Laker as he continues to get more comfortable within the offense and with his teammates. Over his past seven games, Dončić is averaging 31.0 points, 9.4 rebounds and 9.6 assists on 40.8/39.5/79.7 shooting splits. Doncic isn’t shooting the way he wants to as he battles several lower-body injuries, but he has continued to get to the free-throw line and fill up the stat sheet as the driving force of the offense.
His arrival has changed the geometry of the Lakers’ offense. They have actualized Redick’s preseason vision of becoming a high 3-point volume team, one of the primary offensive principles in the modern era.
The Lakers are attempting 42.3 3-point attempts per 100 possessions since Dončić made his debut on Feb. 10, the second-highest mark in the NBA over that stretch. Before that date, the Lakers averaged 34.3 3-point attempts per 100 possessions, which ranked 26th in the league. With Dončić on the floor, the Lakers’ 3-point frequency increases by 6 percent, a mark that ranks in the 94th percentile league-wide, according to Cleaning The Glass.
The uptick directly correlates to Dončić, who is a threat to pull up or step back for 3s at anywhere within 30 feet, putting defenses on edge as they try to take that away while preventing him from shredding them with his generational court vision and playmaking.
Interestingly, while Dončić’s presence has modernized the offense, it hasn’t led to league-shattering results. The Lakers’ offense has only been 2.5 points per 100 possessions better with Dončić on the floor, per NBA.com. Their 116.1 offensive rating with Dončić on the floor would rank just seventh in the NBA.
“He creates such havoc for teams’ defenses that 90 percent of the time people are blitzing him, as you can probably see, and he makes the right play out of the blitz,” Austin Reaves said. “He doesn’t try to force it too much in those situations, and he makes the right play. So therefore you’re playing four-on-three, and it just comes down to playing the game the right way and passing it to the open person, because three people can’t guard four.”
The latest example of how the offense has dramatically changed came on Monday versus the Spurs. The Lakers made 19 3-pointers, tied for their second-most of the season. They attempted 48 3-pointers, tied for their fourth-most of the season. And of those 3s, 34 of them were uncontested shots (70.8 percent), Redick said.
The Lakers will often run either high pick-and-rolls with Dončić and Jaxson Hayes, who has quietly been a significant factor in their 2025 turnaround, or a double drag action in which Hayes and a perimeter player will both screen for Dončić, forcing the defense to read and react against a maze of bodies.
Dončić prefers playing alongside a vertical lob threat, as he did in Dallas with Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford. That preference is why the Lakers traded for Mark Williams before ultimately rescinding the trade. They wanted to pair Dončić with a rim-running lob threat.
But Hayes has become one of the league’s better finishers around the rim, with incredible hands, quickness, explosion, and a ridiculous catch radius. He leads the league in field-goal percentage (77.3 percent) since Jan. 30, when he replaced Davis as the team’s starting center.
Possessions like this, in which Dončić and Hayes run a pick-and-roll and Hayes runs undeterred to the rim for a dunk because both defenders shift to Dončić, have become frequent since Dončić’s arrival.
“You can see the difference,” Dončić said about having Hayes in the lineup. “For me, it helps me a lot.”
And it’s not just Hayes’ rim-running and finishing. It’s also his playmaking. He’s grown as a passer out of the short roll this season, finding weak-side shooters and cutters with four-on-three and three-on-two advantages. His activity in the middle of the floor is a sneaky component of the Lakers’ offense.
Watch here as Hayes screens for Dončić, who draws a blitz for the second time on this possession. Hayes retreats toward the free-throw line and makes himself a big target. Because the defense is scrambling to recover to open shooters, they misread their coverages and leave Reaves relatively wide open at the top of the arc for 3.
“If you don’t have a threat at the rim, then it’s really just three-on-three and teams are able to scram back and get back matched up,” Redick said. “Having someone again that has the threat of catching a lob or getting a tip or getting a drop-off pass for a dunk, that creates, we call it marginal indecision against offensive players that we’re trying to create with our defense. That creates marginal indecision for the defenders more.”
Sometimes all it takes is a drag screen — a ball screen set in transition or semi-transition — from Hayes or another Laker to get the defense in a frenzy.
Here, Hayes screens for Dončić, who once again draws two defenders to the ball. Reaves’ defender, Devin Vassell, even cheats over. With Harrison Barnes shifting over to prevent the lob to Hayes, there is no one to cover Dorian Finney-Smith, who’s wide open in the right corner. Bang.
Dončić and Reaves have ramped up their chemistry in recent games, in part because James has been out and Reaves has had to step up as the No. 2 in the offense. It’s a role Reaves has carried at various points this season whenever James or Davis (pre-trade) missed time.
The Lakers usually station Reaves opposite Dončić, acting as something of a safety valve for a ball reversal. In those instances, Reaves can drive, pass or shoot.
If a team completely helps off Reaves one pass away, as the Spurs do on this possession, Dončić will make the easy ready and the 37.1 percent catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter will make the opponent pay.
After a disastrous 0-4 road trip in which James injured his groin, the Lakers, led by Dončić, have stabilized with back-to-back wins. Aside from getting healthy and earning the best playoff seed possible, the Lakers’ primary goal over their final 15 games will be sharpening up the offensive end, which hasn’t been as effective as the defensive end for over two months.
But while the results haven’t always been there, the Lakers are trusting their new offensive process. Dončić is an offense unto himself, and it takes time to incorporate that type of talent 50-plus games into a season. Once James and Rui Hachimura return, which could be by the end of the week, the Lakers will be well-positioned to finally reach their offensive ceiling.
“I think it’s all going to come together where we’re finishing, we’re passing, we’re taking care of the basketball, we’re making 3s,” Redick said. “But (I’m) pleased with how we’re able to generate good looks fairly consistently.”
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(Photo of Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
