So anyone signed off the buyout market that we're being aggressive in has to be signed by March 1st to be eligible for the playoffs. So that gives us a day shy of two weeks. All the talking heads have been saying that though they don't expect the Jazz to make a trade, they don't think our current roster is our playoff roster. Time is ticking down and we'll see. But, I think this observation from SCS in another thread is quite pertinent to this discussion:
So I was deep diving some numbers.
The Lakers really live at the rim. They are 4th in the NBA in attempts at a distance of 5 feet or less and they are 1st in FG% from that distance at 67.3%.
Away from the rim they only shoot 39.1% on shots from 5-9 feet, 39.7% on shots from 10-14 feet, an abysmal 36.4% on shots from 15-19 feet, 40.4% on shots from 20-25 feet, and 34.2% from 25-29 feet. They tend to settle for 15-25 footers when they don't get to the rim too.
In other words they are very vulnerable if a team limits/takes away the rim.
I'm interested to see how this reliance on production at the rim works out for the Lakers in the playoffs when defenses tighten and buckets are harder to come by.
In theory, if the Jazz were to face the Lakers and the Jazz executed their defense the way it is designed to work they could cause problems for the Lakers. Because there's not a better rim protector in the league than Rudy Gobert.