Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 at 9:00 am  |  159 responses

Lakers to Run the Princenton Offense Next Season


by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni

In 2012-’13, the Los Angeles Lakers will be a significantly different-looking team from the one that we saw last season. Not only is Steve Nash the new point guard in Tinseltown, but the Lakers are also implementing a different offensive scheme.

After Kobe Bryant suggested the change over the summer — and with the aid of Eddie Jordan, who is expected to be hired as an assistant coach by the Lakers — the legendary Princeton offense is making its way into head coach Mike Brown’s playbook. Bryant seems to believe the tweak will be a highly beneficial thing for his squad.

Per the NY Daily News and Yahoo! Sports:

Bryant broached the idea of changing the offense with Brown three weeks ago in Las Vegas because “I thought it could be something beneficial to us. To his credit we sat down and talked about it. We all agreed that this could be something that could really help us.”

At 33 years old, Bryant needs edges this season, and the prospect of returning to the discipline of an offensive system in the post-Phil Jackson era holds appeal. “It’s a great offense,” Bryant said. “It’s exactly what we need. It takes us back to being able to play by making reads and reacting to defenses. It takes a great deal of communication, but that’s where we’re at our best: Reading and reacting as opposed to just coming down and calling sets. Calling sets make you vulnerable. There’s so many threats, so many options, it’s very tough to defend. Against the type of defenses that teams play nowadays, they load up on one side and are constantly coming with help from the weak side. The Princeton offense makes it very, very tough to lock in on one particular player. From my experience, those types of principles – ball movement, changing sides on the floor, everybody being involved – those are championship principles. That’s championship DNA.”

Kobe Bryant is particularly excited about how this new offense for the Lakers could help get Pau Gasol’s groove back. Bryant claims that Nash’s playmaking coupled with the Princeton scheme are right in Gasol’s “wheelhouse”.

These are desperate times for the Los Angeles Lakers — with an aging and very expensive core — and that calls for dramatic, sweeping change on all fronts.

It remains to be seen, however, if any of this will result in a return to NBA championship contention.

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  • pposse

    and btw Lebron and co. created a culture in Miami where veteran former stars want to go and play. So pretty much now the Heat because of Lebron’s unselfishness promote high basketball iq guys to go there for less money all in the name of winning.

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    The Heat were exceptionally talented.
    Bron, Wade and Bosh form a core that is unassailable. They upgraded with Haslem being healthy, adding Battier and Chalmers taking a leap. Plus, Cole was a good backup for them as well.
    So, compared to every other team, they had crazy talent. I would say OKC is the only other team close on talent in fact. However, the Heat did deal with injuries throughout the year.
    Look, when Kobe won, he had championship caliber talent. There were maybe two other teams if that who could match him.

  • Drig

    @pposse…….Malone and Payton came to LAL for less money for a ring. When Kobe and Shaq were there……Nothing much to do with unselfishness. More to do with where they have the best chance of winning. Also, I’m not a believer of replacing player X with player Y and you’re much much better unless both players have similar games and one is much better than the rest. I’d have loved to see how LBJ would’ve operated mostly from the perimeter and not driven as much into the paint and also be the only viable perimeter scoring threat for LAL that year.( Metta on the post was good. Very good. Metta on the perimeter was worse than that mad girls movie… )Kobe still had ( and arguably still has ) the better perimeter game than LBJ back then and hence was the better fit for the Lakers that year, esp. since he already knew the intricacies of the Triangle O. ( which he did break a lot of times too )

  • Drig

    @Allenp……agreed. That was the only thing I wanted to make clear. They were championship caliber. But there were 2-3 teams which could match them. It wasn’t like LAL were simply much much better than the entire L.

  • Drig

    @Allen……don’t know why I can’t make two consecutive replies at times ( the thing rarely cooperates ) but co-sign whatever you said. I was saying the same thing in my posts as well : LAL was a championship caliber team just like 2-3 other teams were at that point but at the end of the day, none of them were flawless teams. They were beatable. They got the right matchups at the end of the day. ( atleast sans ’08 ) Looks like all of this started with SExchange’s comment about Kobe managing to magically align with the teams with the most superior talent when he was going for a championship just like MJ, Bird, Magic and tons of other legends. It comes down to semantics I guess.

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    I would say that the team with Pau and Bynum had a great advantage having two quality bigs in a league short on bigs.
    The team with Shaq and Kobe had better talent than everyone, just because they had Shaq and Kobe.
    So for three of his rings, I would say Kobe had better talent than everyone else. The Shaq and Kobe combo with decent to good role players was way better than everyone else, even those stacked Portland teams.
    But, with Gasol and Bynum he just have very good, championship level talent. So did the Celtics.

  • pposse

    when MJ retired for the second time, i like many people from the Chi stopped watching the NBA. I did watch when LA played PHI in the finals, and after the game 1 victory i started to become an NBA fan again. But that quickly went away when LA pulled off 4 straight. Any team with Kobe and Shaq were unstoppable imo. Thats why when they lost to the Pistons i was pleasantly shocked, but the fallout changed the course of NBA history. If it wasn’t for that loss, i still don’t think that i would be paying attention to the NBA cause at that time i believed the Lakers would never lose until both of those guys retired. To this day i still think that Shaq is the second best of all time from what I have seen. I didn’t grow up with Magic and Bird and the older guys.

  • http://Roosterteeth.com Caboose

    Anyone else spot that Kobe wants to run the same offense of his greatest rival, the 2000-04 Kings? Either way, if Pau runs the high post, Bynum stays in short corner, and Kobe picks his spots instead of just doing what he thinks is good enough, it could work. Modifications would be needed (float MWP around the wings, preferable stepping in when the ball swings and Nash allowed to penetrate and kick more than a Princeton offense allows) but it could work. Oh wait. Mike Brown. Sorry LA.

  • http://GymAlien.com GymAlien

    I can already CLEARLY see these ever present Laker/Kobe hater’s crying themselves to sleep every night as their favorite team takes it in the shorts from the highly probable “World Champion Los Angeles Lakers” as Chickie baby used to say so often through the years. This team has what it takes. (but as a side note; I just have to hand it to the Clipper GM-this guy is really good)
    GymAlien said so!!

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