Tag: 2020-21 nba season

Lakers report card: Player grades for the regular season

The regular season is over for the Los Angeles Lakers. How did the players perform over the course of the year?

The Los Angeles Lakers regular season did not materialize as hoped for the defending NBA champions, as they’ll have to earn their spot in the playoffs as the current seventh seed in the Western Conference.

At 42-30, the Lakers finished with an equal record to two conference foes in the Portland Trail Blazers and the Dallas Mavericks, but since Los Angeles lost both tiebreakers to the two squads, L.A. had to deal with being the seventh seed rather than fifth, which would’ve eluded them from the play-in tournament.

Constant setbacks became the theme for the Lakers, with injuries to Anthony Davis and LeBron James serving as the pinnacle to an injury-riddled season. However, the team did finish with the best defense in the league.

The coronavirus pandemic didn’t make the situation easier, as Dennis Schroder and Marc Gasol both missed sizable chunks of the season because of health and safety protocols.

Los Angeles finally witnessed a fully healthy roster for the first time in a long time, ironically occurring in their win in the season finale over the New Orleans Pelicans.

Before the Lakers take on the Golden State Warriors Wednesday for the seventh seed, let’s analyze Los Angeles’ regular season performance one last time:

Lakers finish regular season with No. 1 ranked defense

Despite the myriad injuries and setbacks, the Los Angeles Lakers maintained the NBA’s best defense in the 2020-21 season.

In a season plagued by injuries to superstars and imperative role players, including missed games because of health and safety protocols, the Los Angeles Lakers managed to attain the top spot in a stalwart category.

With the 72-game regular season officially in the books, the Lakers have finished the campaign holding the league’s best defense, ranking first in team defensive rating.

Los Angeles’ defensive rating of 106.8 narrowly edged over the Philadelphia 76ers’ mark of 107.0, a team that started closing the gap on L.A. as the season came to a close.

What stands out most about this achievement is the manner in which they obtained it. Anthony Davis missed 36 games, equivalent to half of the season. LeBron James had some overlapped missed games with Davis, absent from 27 total contests, the most in his career.

Dennis Schroder also missed 11 games, chiefly because of health and safety protocols, and the timing of those omissions stemmed from games when one of either James or Davis weren’t available, straining the load on head coach Frank Vogel’s hands.

Alex Caruso, one of Los Angeles’ best defenders off the bench, missed 14 games. The list only persists from there, but the bottom line is the Lakers achieved this with minimal continuity.

Whether Vogel receives recognition for his role in this is ambiguous, but he and the coaching staff deserve laudation for keeping the defensive chemistry intact, bestowing the Lakers a fighting chance when their offense faltered because of these setbacks.

The last time Los Angeles finished with the league’s premier defense came in the 1999-00 season. That year, the Lakers registered a defensive rating of 96.4 with a roster starring Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Glen Rice and Ron Harper, among others.

The Lakers also went on to win the NBA Championship that year, for what it’s worth.

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WATCH: Is the play-in tournament a dumb idea – or a great one?

How are you feeling about the play-in tournament with the Celtics just outside its range?

As the second-ever NBA postseason play-in tournament draws closer with the end of the 2020-21 regular season in sight, increasingly vocal opinions on that novel wrinkle to playoff contention are starting to make their way around the wider NBA media sphere.

And with the team currently clinging to the Eastern Conference’s sixth-place spot with just six games left in the season, whether the play-in tournament is good or bad for the NBA is a debate that’s increasingly relevant for Boston Celtics fans, as Team President Danny Ainge recently acknowledged in his usual weekly appearance on a popular New England sports radio show.

The hosts of the CLNS Media podcast “The A-List” Kwani A. Lunis and A. Sherrod Blakely weigh in on this increasingly contentious topic in their most recent episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXr8cEsLpd8

Check out the video embedded above to hear all they have to say about the play-in tournament, Evan Fournier’s recent comments on COVID, the top-five all-time point guards and a lot more with guest Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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NBA releases scheduling plans for 2020-21 season, including play-in games

The NBA released their plans for scheduling the 2020-21 NBA season in a recent press release.

The NBA has released key details about how the 2020-21 season will work with scheduling designed to minimize travel due to the ongoing pandemic.

In a press release circulated by the NBA, the league shared that every team will play the others in their conference three times for a total of 42 games with at least one home game per series.

Within each division in that conference, the league will decide randomly which teams get more home games.

The NBA also shared that all five teams within a division “will play all five teams from one other intraconference division twice at home, and all five teams from the remaining intraconference division twice on the road.”

Teams will play two games with each team in their conference (so, for the Boston Celtics, a pair of games with each of the other 15 East teams) for a total of 30 games to complete the 72-game schedule, split home and road.

Scheduling for the season will be released in halves.

The first wave will come in early December close to training camp, and the second “during the latter part of the First Half” of the 2020-21 schedule to allow for flexibility in making up any potentially canceled games.

All-Star week will be from March 5th to 10th, 2021 — the planned halfway point of the season.

The league’s Board of Governors also approved a new version of the play-in tournament will pit the teams with the seventh through tenth-best winning percentage in each contest against one another ahead of the playoffs to determine which teams make the seventh and eight seeds for the postseason.

The seventh- and eighth-ranked teams will face one another to lock in the seventh seed, and the loser will join those teams who held the ninth- and tenth-best records in a fight for the eighth that will require to wins over the competing teams to secure.

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Will NBA’s plan to limit travel in 2020-21 season also help reduce injury?

An unexpected benefit of the NBA’s Disney bubble was fewer injuries to players; will the league’s plan to limit travel have a similar effect?

The 2020-21 NBA season is set to begin outside of a bubble despite surging COVID-19 cases around the U.S. A plan to minimize travel and limit fans is the primary means of keeping players safe.

The bubble restart hosted at Disney didn’t just keep players safe according to a recent article by Run Repeat’s Dimitrije Curcic — it had an additional perk of reducing the number of injuries suffered by players.

Per Curcic, players missed 28% fewer games playing at the Lake Buena Vista location compared to the previous five seasons, and those injuries appeared less severe as a whole.

Players tended to miss 2.9 games per injury, 24% less than the five-season average despite games being closer than normal.

This suggests a lack of travel might be an important factor. So, perhaps, was the absence of back-to-back games. Both factors can be measured against the results seen in a 2020-21 NBA schedule with reduced travel — but perhaps more back-to-back games than usual.

It’s an interesting wrinkle the league will be able to monitor to help guide future scheduling decisions, particularly for teams such as the Celtics who have seen postseason aspirations take hits due to injury in three of their last four seasons.

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Will NBA’s plan to limit travel in 2020-21 season also help reduce injury?

An unexpected benefit of the NBA’s Disney bubble was fewer injuries to players; will the league’s plan to limit travel have a similar effect?

The 2020-21 NBA season is set to begin outside of a bubble despite surging COVID-19 cases around the U.S. A plan to minimize travel and limit fans is the primary means of keeping players safe.

The bubble restart hosted at Disney didn’t just keep players safe according to a recent article by Run Repeat’s Dimitrije Curcic — it had an additional perk of reducing the number of injuries suffered by players.

Per Curcic, players missed 28% fewer games playing at the Lake Buena Vista location compared to the previous five seasons, and those injuries appeared less severe as a whole.

Players tended to miss 2.9 games per injury, 24% less than the five-season average despite games being closer than normal.

This suggests a lack of travel might be an important factor. So, perhaps, was the absence of back-to-back games. Both factors can be measured against the results seen in a 2020-21 NBA schedule with reduced travel — but perhaps more back-to-back games than usual.

It’s an interesting wrinkle the league will be able to monitor to help guide future scheduling decisions, particularly for teams such as the Celtics who have seen postseason aspirations take hits due to injury in three of their last four seasons.

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With NBA options dates set for 11/19, Celtics offseason focus sharpens

With option dates for contracts reportedly due in by November 19th, the Boston Celtics’ offseason timeline has become clearer.

The majority of the players in the NBA with option dates on the remainder of their current contracts — team or player — will have to make the choice by November 11th, according to Yahoo Sports’ Keith Smith.

For the Boston Celtics, this is the D-Day of their offseason, barring any friendly deals with the player and team having decided such a move is in everyone’s best interest (more on this shortly).

With one of their best players in veteran forward Gordon Hayward having to tender his choice of whether to remain with the team for one more season, extend, or leave the Butler product will determine much of the other moves his current team makes once he lets the franchise know his plans.

He could, as we alluded, allow for the team to make a move on Monday when the moratorium lifts — but only if the decision is a mutual one.

Big man Enes Kanter is in a similar boat, the pair possessing the team’s player options.

Center Daniel Theis and wing Semi Ojeleye also have decisions to be made about their future with the team by that date, the former almost certain to see his team option picked up, and the latter likely a hostage to the end result of whatever else the team has planned.

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Woj: trade moratorium to lift Monday at noon; Lakers have deal lined up

The NBA’s trade moratorium will lift on Monday at noon per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports rival Los Angeles Lakers already have a deal in place.

Trade season is set to begin at noon, and longtime Boston Celtics rivals and NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers already have a deal lined up to move veteran guard Danny Green to the Oklahoma City Thunder for point guard Dennis Schöder, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

The move will bolster the team’s playmaking depth and further solidify their odds of repeating while Boston and the rest of the league work behind the scenes to set up similar deals wherever prudent and possible.

Other points of importance relayed by Wojnarowski Sunday morning about the coming 2020-21 NBA season include keeping the league’s salary cap and luxury tax at $109.1 million and $132.6 million, respectively.

Wojnarowski also notes that the league and the Players Union wil both retain the right to terminate the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) at the end of the coming season, and the season after.

Both sides retain a mutual option for CBA termination in the 2022-23 season as well.

The ESPN analyst also outlined a series of important dates in the 2020-21 NBA season.

They include the Dec. 22nd start date, an All-Star break from Mar. 5th to the 8th, a May 16th end to the regular season with the play-in tournament to start the day after and last until the 21st of May.

It also included a playoff schedule that would see the first round of the 2021 postseason begin on May 22nd, conference semifinals to begin June 7th, conference finals the 22nd of that month, and the NBA Finals to begin on July 8th, ending on the 22nd.

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Charania: NBA targeting December 11-19 for preseason of 3-4 games

The NBA hopes to have 3-4 preseason games per team between December 11th and the 19th of that month.

The outline of the 2020-21 NBA season is starting to come into focus.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania reports that the NBA is planning to have preseason between December 11th and December 19th, with each team having the option to request a three or four game schedule, with at least one home game on the slate.

With the regular season slated to start on December 22nd and training camps to start on the first day of that month, the league’s post-draft calendar is filling out rapidly less than two weeks after an impasse between the NBA and National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) on when to start the season.

With the NBA draft slated for November 18th, concrete dates for contract options and free agency are among the last question marks to be resolved in the league’s short term future.

With the effects of the pandemic shaping this most unusual transition between seasons even still, clarification on the NBA’s COVID-19 policies will also be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

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