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Lakers, Jackson still trying to figure out bench situation
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If the starters want to get some rest, the bench needs to step up.
The Los Angeles Lakers had one of the deepest, strongest, reserve units in basketball during the 2007-08 season. Led by breakout years by guards Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar, the "bench mob" used to strike fear in the hearts of opponents and extend leads.
Last year they were downright poor, giving up leads left and right. The only bright spots were Lamar Odom, who was wildly inconsistent and started after Andrew Bynum's injury, and Shannon Brown, who didn't join the team until the end of the season.
This season did not start off well in Tuesday night's win over the Los Angeles Clippers, with the bench giving up yet another lead.
Phil Jackson addressed this by saying (from the Press-Enterprise):
The bench just got off to a ragged start. The starters played much more than I planned, but I didn't like a lot of the matchups I was forced into so I stayed with the starters because the matchups were probably better.
Matchups are something the Lakers were supposed to be able to handle. They have the tag-team point guard tandem of Brown and Jordan Farmar, the offense-defense big men of Josh Powell and DJ Mbenga, the skilled shooters of Vujacic and Adam Morrison, and the savvy basketball mind of Luke Walton.
The problem would seem to be that they don't have a leader. It's supposed to be the point guard (Farmar actually played pretty well Tuesday night), but against the Clippers it took an injection from the starting lineup to boost the bench's vital signs.
Although he started the game, Odom insisted on playing with the bench unit later in the game. As Jackson said:
He wanted to play with the second unit, and he was kind of the inspirational person in the second half of the game. It was quite obvious we needed someone else besides that second unit out there to help facilitate what we wanted to do.
The good news is, if Bynum continues to play the way he played Tuesday night, Odom will be returning to the bench when Pau Gasol comes back from injury (possibly Friday).
The bad news is, when the Lakers have their inevitable injury and Odom is forced back into the starting lineup, who is going to step up from the bench?
Jackson will need to rest his aging starters towards the end of the regular season to make sure they're ready for the playoffs, so the bench is going to get playing time whether they're effective or not.
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