During the Los Angeles Lakers’ victory against the Memphis Grizzlies Sunday, the team used a new play on offense to generate good looks.
In the late stages of the game, LeBron James and Russell Westbrook partnered on inverted pick-and-rolls — where the guard sets the screen for the bigger player — to create shots.
Westbrook in the short roll — when he doesn’t roll all the way to the basket — would often find Anthony Davis cutting to the rim for an easy look.
Memphis didn’t know how to guard it, and putting James and Westbrook in those scenarios is something the Lakers want to leverage because of Westbrook’s passing ability.
James after the game said the inverted pick-and-roll is part of a larger playbook the Lakers haven’t touched so far.
“We haven’t put in our full playbook yet,” James said. “We have a new team so we still are implementing ways where we can be even better offensively…we haven’t even explored it just yet, we just put it in tonight, that pick-and-roll.”
James analyzed how the play will work to Los Angeles’ advantage going forward.
“A lot of teams are not going to switch points guards onto me on the perimeter, and if I’m able to get to Russ on the 3-on-2, his ability to read the game from that position will be with any playmakers in our game, and obviously, he showed it, what he was able to do, getting up in the air, getting [Steven] Adams to take a look at him for a quick second, wrap it around to AD for the dunk,” James said. “That’s something that’s going to work very well for our ball club moving forward.”
The Lakers can run various types of pick-and-rolls because of the ball-handling diversity on the roster. Los Angeles prioritized adding more offensive-minded players over the summer to improve on that end, and these plays are flashes of what could come.