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So much for keeping Anthony Davis as the starting center. For the seventh time this year and the second game in a row, the Lakers announced their starting lineup for Saturday night’s game against Portland, and increasingly maligned big man DeAndre Jordan was tabbed as the starting center.
This comes to the frustration of many Lakers fans who have gotten weary of seeing coach Frank Vogel trot out Jordan, whose NBA career has relied largely on the now-sapped athleticism he brought to the defensive end, among the starters. Jordan has performed like a 33-year-old who has lost a step. Jordan only plays in small spurts—his longest stint has been 17:06 minutes and his shortest was 10:12—but keeping him in the starting five seems mostly useless at this point.
Remember, the Lakers were only able to sign Jordan because the Nets no longer had use for him and gave him a buyout.
In fact, as Lakers reporter Harrison Faigen of SilverScreenandRoll.com notes, playing Jordan in the starting five alongside Davis is counterproductive because Jordan always plays close to the basket on the offensive end. In fact, the headline of Faigen’s article was clear: “Benching DeAndre Jordan would be the best thing for both the Lakers and DeAndre Jordan.”
As Faigen wrote, “Jordan is not really a starting-caliber player at this stage of his career, or even really an every-day-rotation-caliber one. But the injuries that have ravaged the Lakers also means that no matter one’s opinion of his level of play, he has to play at this point, and him coming off of the bench might be the best way to make him most effective, because he just does not complement the stars they need to get the most out of.”
Jordan Rarely Leaves the Restricted Area Offensively
That’s because Jordan is simply unable to do anything offensively but stand near the basket and hope to fed a lob or grab an offensive rebound. That’s not necessarily new. Jordan has never been one to drift far from the rim, and for his 14-year career, he has taken 83.2% of his shots from within three feet of the basket, according to Basketball-Reference.com. He has taken 15.3% of his shots from just beyond that 3-foot mark, but not from greater than 10 feet away.
That means that out of 5,262 career field-goal attempts, 1.5%–or 79—of Jordan shots have been from a spot beyond 10 feet. He needs to hold fast to the restricted area, which is a problem on a team that has rim-attackers like Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and, to a lesser extent, Davis on the roster. Jordan’s presence inside simply creates traffic in an area that the Lakers want to keep clear so that the team’s three stars can operate in their comfort zones.
Yet Lakers coach Frank Vogel has been consistent about playing two big guys—namely, Jordan alongside Davis—and said that he intends to mix-and-match in the middle as he sees fit. The Lakers have big names at center, with Jordan and Dwight Howard on board, plus Davis, but none fits the position perfectly.
“They know that we’ve been our best over the last couple of years being a hybrid unit,” Vogel said of his centers. “Sometimes AD plays the five, sometimes he’s at the four. They both knew (Howard and Jordan) that when they signed here and the whole mindset of our whole group is we’re trying to win a championship this year and whatever sacrifice is required, everybody is all in.”
Davis Started at Center–Twice–This Week
Vogel raised the hope of some Lakers fans this week when he benched Jordan and, finally, started Davis at center for two games against Houston. Throughout his career, Davis has resisted playing center, preferring to be a versatile power forward, but as the game has changed, there is more and more pressure on him to be a 5. This week began with the hope that Davis would be a more permanent fixture in the spot.
Alas, Vogel re-inserted Jordan into the starting five on Thursday and put him in there again on Saturday. The Davis-in-the-middle experiment did not last long, and Vogel has returned the Lakers to the comfort of the two-big-guy lineup, despite the fact that they don’t work well, at least not with Jordan.
“There is still just really no argument (at least early on) for the Lakers to continue to justify using them,” Faigen wrote. “The two-big lineup can work defensively with Howard because of his superior defensive instincts and abilities, but it just can’t with Jordan at this stage of his career.”
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