Fact or Fiction: The Lakers can build a champion around Luka Dončić's defense Ben RohrbachJanuary 24, 2026 at 2:41 AM 4 Each week during the 202526 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league's biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
- - Fact or Fiction: The Lakers can build a champion around Luka Dončić's defense
Ben RohrbachJanuary 24, 2026 at 2:41 AM
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Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league's biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
Last week: Jonathan Kuminga is a good basketball player
Fact or Fiction: The Lakers can build a champion around Luka Dončić's defense
Every time you type "JJ Redick" into a search engine, you're hit with some headline like, Lakers coach blasts team's effort, or, The latest attempt to solve Los Angeles' defense!
"Look, my staff and I, our analytics team, this is all we're doing right now," Redick told reporters following Tuesday's 115-107 win over the shorthanded Denver Nuggets. "We're trying to figure out what's the best way for this team, with this group, to play defense."
We are at the season's midway point. (In fact, we are nearing the one-year anniversary of Luka Dončić's trade to the Los Angeles Lakers, who face his former team on Saturday!)
This is an improvement from December, when Redick seemed to think there was no tactical adjustment to cure what ailed his defense, other than more effort from his players.
"We practice this stuff enough," he said after a loss to the Phoenix Suns. "We review this stuff enough. We show film on this stuff enough that to me it comes down to … just making the choice. It's making the choice. There are shortcuts you can take, or you can do the hard thing, and you can make the second effort, or you can sprint back, or you can't."
Whether it is the coaching staff's scheme or their players' intention, the fact of the matter is: The Lakers' defense is bad. On the season, they rate 25th out of 30 teams, allowing 117.3 points per 100 possessions. Since the start of December, when the Lakers are 11-13, they have allowed 119.2 points per 100 possessions, rating 29th on the defensive end. Only the Utah Jazz, who own the worst defensive rating in NBA history, have been worse than L.A.
One reason they are terrible at defense: Nobody gets hunted more than Dončić.
(Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
According to Synergy's play-type statistics, teams complete 2.2 possessions per game opposite Dončić's isolation defense, the most of anyone in the league. Granted, this only accounts for how many plays opponents finish against Dončić, not necessarily how many times he gets hunted throughout a game, but it gives us a good portrait of the problem.
(Tyler Herro ranks second behind Dončić in that regard, to give you an idea of its accuracy.)
Of course, another reason they are terrible at defense: They failed to surround Dončić with anyone capable of stopping the ball. Dončić's co-stars, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, are far from defensive stoppers. And Deandre Ayton is hardly a rim protector.
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As Redick said following a recent blowout loss, "I thought our low man was awful all night."
Marcus Smart might be the Lakers' best option at the point of attack, but the 31-year-old is four years and several injuries removed from being the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year.
"There's really no defense, no scheme we can do when we're giving up offensive rebounds in crucial moments like we are, or guys are getting wherever they want on the court," Smart conceded in December. "And there's no help, there's no resistance, there's no urgency. So, it's tough. And JJ is right: There's really nothing he can do. It's on us."
And us isn't good enough, defensively, to win a championship.
Which begs the same question Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison answered in the negative at this time last year: Can you build a champion around Dončić's defense?
The short answer: Of course. (Spoiler alert: Nico was not right.)
A 24-year-old Dončić led the Mavericks to the 2024 NBA Finals with Kyrie Irving as his co-star. Daniel Gafford, Derrick Jones Jr. and P.J. Washington were the other three starters. That roster rated 18th on the defensive end during the regular season, hardly a juggernaut, and they came within three wins of a championship. Build the right team around Dončić — a roster full of two-way contributors — and obviously you can win a championship with him.
He is, after all, one in the handful of best basketball players in the world, averaging a league-leading 33.4 points per game, to go along with 8.7 assists and 7.8 rebounds a night.
All of which now leads us to the question at hand: Can the Lakers build a champion around Dončić? That is a far more complicated question to answer, and not just because their front office has made a series of missteps since winning the 2020 title. Then again, they did win that championship, they did acquire Dončić, and they did develop Reaves.
(Ownership also may have been messy, but that is a story for a different day.)
The presence of James and Reaves, along with Dončić, is a defensive problem. They are three of the most talented scorers in the game, and the team's three best players, and the Lakers want them all on the floor together, only they are being outscored by 7.4 points per 100 possessions, almost as bad as this year's Washington Wizards, when that is the case.
Even if James, the 41-year-old phenom, who has lost several steps defensively, has a frosty relationship with Lakers leadership — a report he did not flatly deny on Thursday — it would be awfully difficult for them to piece together a trade by the Feb. 5 trade deadline, especially one that returns them enough help defensively to patch together a contender.
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He is, however, a free agent at season's end, and it is becoming increasingly less surprising that James and the Lakers may mutually part ways this summer. In fact, the franchise can clear as much as $54 million in salary cap space in July, according to Spotrac's Keith Smith.
That gives the Lakers one chance — this summer — to spend on the roster around Dončić, before Reaves (assuming he opts out of his $15 million contract for next season) signs what could be something close to a maximum extension of his own. Then our question becomes: Can the Lakers build a champion around the defense of Dončić and Reaves?
Right now, the Lakers, when Dončić and Reaves are on the court without James, are outscoring opponents by 14.2 points per 100 meaningful possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, operating at a historic level offensively and a top-three level defensively.
That is beyond encouraging. The idea, then: Use the Mavericks' blueprint, only with Reaves in the Irving role as Dončić's co-star, and find three two-way forces to play along with them.
Problem is: The 2026 free-agency class is a dud, at least in terms of defensive stalwarts. Might a 36-year-old Draymond Green decline his $27.7 million option for next season if more money awaited in L.A.? Does the oft-injured Robert Williams III interest the Lakers?
More likely, the Lakers will have to get creative, trying to trade players into their cap space, using their far-out future draft picks as bait, and possibly even dangling Reaves if a return is right. Can they get someone like Trey Murphy III or Herb Jones, or both, from the New Orleans Pelicans? Every other team in the league is in search of the same 3-and-D wings.
Our final question, then — another to come back to on another day — if we think we have sufficiently answered the one at hand (and of course the Lakers can build a champion around Dončić; any team can): Is Rob Pelinka the executive the Lakers want doing the job?
The Lakers are under new ownership, a group that did not hire Pelinka, and they will be both motivated to win and to spend, especially after investing $10 billion in the team.
Determination: Fact. The Lakers can build a champion around Dončić. Just not this season. It will take time — perhaps years' worth — but the good news is they have it. Dončić is 26 years old and under contract through the 2028-29 season. (Thanks again, Nico.)
Source: "AOL Sports"
Source: Sports
Published: January 23, 2026 at 11:27PM on Source: ANDY MAG
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