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The Lakers' offense is in a world of pain

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The thing about jump-shooting woes is that they're basically resistant to analysis. There's no real way to predict when a shooting slump will hit or when it's going to end, and the only answer to such a slump is to say, "Eventually it will regress back to the mean." Considering the importance of shooting in today's NBA, that fact can be a little frustrating.

The Los Angeles Lakers are probably getting tired of telling themselves their shooting will eventually stabilize. The entire team is in the midst of an epic slump, and it's threatening to undo the Lakers' championship pursuit. They're in a 1-0 hole against the eighth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers after losing 100-93 in Tuesday night's Game 1, a game in which L.A. shot 5-of-32 from 3-point range and posted its lowest effective field-goal percentage (37.6%) of the season.

Tuesday's contest was the continuation of a trend that emerged in the seeding stage, a stage in which the Lakers ranked 20th out of 22 bubble teams in offensive rating (after ranking fourth in the league pre-shutdown) and dead last in 3-point shooting at 30.3% (down from 35.4% before the hiatus.)

A tilt against a Blazers defense that's been objectively awful throughout the restart and has no natural defenders for either LeBron James or Anthony Davis ought to have been just what the Lakers needed to get their scuffling offense back on track. Instead, they bricked their way to a 91.2 offensive rating despite grabbing 17 offensive rebounds. Portland outscored them by 24 points from beyond the arc.

The colossal ripple effects of L.A.'s shooting slump were evident throughout. The Blazers started undrafted rookie Wenyen Gabriel to match up with Davis, but the Lakers big man couldn't take advantage. That was partly because Gabriel moves his feet quite well, but mostly because the Blazers sent early double-teams at Davis in the post and shaded extra defenders toward him any time he tried to face up - with no repercussions (though they did send him on plenty of trips to the free-throw line).

In the halfcourt, James was similarly unable to take full advantage of his perpetual size, strength, and speed mismatches because the lane was simply too crowded. The rare times he worked his way into the post, he too drew double-teams and saw his kickout passes go for naught. Portland had multiple bodies in the paint all night, mixing in a dash of zone coverage to mitigate disadvantages in individual matchups. That strategy also allowed the Blazers to find success playing their twin-center look with both Jusuf Nurkic and Hassan Whiteside on the floor. Those two overlapped for 11 minutes, during which the team registered an 85 defensive rating and outscored the Lakers by 13 points. Whiteside was a monster protecting the rim down the stretch.

Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBA / Getty

James and Davis managed to do some damage inside over the course of the game, but they contributed to their team's shooting struggles in a big way, going a combined 3-for-21 on shots outside the restricted area. At one point in the fourth quarter, they combined to miss four straight free throws. L.A.'s only reliable sources of offense were leakouts in transition and - for the most part - Davis free throws.

The fact that Danny Green's jumper is currently slumbering in a cryo freezer has been particularly damaging. He's the guy upon whom the Lakers have relied all season to space the floor for their two stars, with his gravity in the corners making it particularly difficult for opponents to send weak-side help. But Green shot 25% from deep during the seeding games and went 2-of-8 - with some really ugly misses - in Game 1. There frankly isn't anyone else on the team who can pick up that slack. Worse, his slump is clearly affecting his willingness to shoot, and his hesitance to pull the trigger on clean looks stalled several Lakers possessions Tuesday. When defenses don't feel compelled to stay glued to him, it gums up the actions the Lakers try to run on the opposite side of the floor.

The lack of shotmaking isn't the only thing ailing the Lakers' offense. Their dearth of secondary playmaking remains a concern, and they still haven't really found a way to get their offense out of the mud when LeBron isn't on the floor. The Lakers recorded 22 assists in Game 1, and James had 16 of them. They scored just 10 points in seven minutes (a 62.5 offensive rating) with him on the bench.

Los Angeles also has to decide whether to keep starting Davis at the 4 and play him in big minutes alongside either Dwight Howard or JaVale McGee, or whether to make him more of a full-time center. Power forward has long been Davis' stated preference, but playing him at the 5 provides so much more room for him to operate as a dive man in the pick-and-roll. The Lakers' smoothest offensive stretch in Game 1 came in the second quarter, with Davis playing center and LeBron diming him up on the roll.

Then again, the Lakers also closed the game with Davis at the 5 and scored just four points over nearly five minutes, barely going to the LeBron-AD pick-and-roll at all. And though having one of McGee or Howard on the floor does clutter things up some, those guys were huge reasons the Lakers dominated on the glass. Howard, in particular, also made a tremendous impact defensively; replacing him with one of the team's wings to fill out a Davis-at-center lineup means replacing him with an inferior player, and the theoretical defense-for-offense tradeoff such a change provides doesn't actually work if the wings aren't hitting their threes.

Los Angeles isn't up against the wall just yet, but it's in a hole against a confident team that's playing with house money and employs the hottest player in the league. As much as the Lakers' offense must be better next game, they should also bank on the Blazers improving upon their own anemic 97.1 rating from Game 1. Shooting may not be L.A.'s only problem, but fixing that one issue would sure go a long way toward ironing out the others.

All slumps end eventually, but the Lakers no longer have time for eventually. They need the whole regression thing to just get on with it already.

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