Mike Brown defends himself, Princeton-style offense

Mike Brown should be glad there is not an election next Tuesday on his status as Lakers coach.

To say Lakers fans are livid after an ugly 0-2 start would be to underestimate the level of frustration around the City of Angels. It’s not just that the Lakers lost — although that is never accepted well — but how they lost. It’s been ugly. They have been outworked for two straight games by teams with less talent.

Taking the brunt of the blame is Brown’s implementation of a Princeton-style offense — a system based on passing big men and cuts off the ball that had a lot of success after the college where it got its name because it allowed smart but less-athletic teams to compete with the big boys.

Except that while the Lakers have big boy athletes they’re not playing flowing basketball — they are thinking and not simply reacting. It led to a poor shooting first game and 25 turnovers against Portland on Wednesday. They have Steve Nash and Dwight Howard but have run few classic pick-and-roll sets.

Leading the new crusade against the offense were Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal on Inside the NBA on TNT after the Lakers first loss. Barkley said he wants his accountants from Princeton, not his offense. Mike Brown laughed off the criticism, reports Mark Medina at the Los Angeles Daily News.

“I’ve been criticized by those guys before. It’s okay,” Brown said with a laugh. “It comes with the territory. I think they’re funny guys. They’re very funny and a joy to watch on TV for a lot of people. I’m okay with that….

“The first thing is with our offense, every time down the floor — and if they want to, they can call Steve Nash and ask him — Steve Nash has the right to play pick and roll if he wants to,” Brown said. “He has said it himself that he doesn’t feel like he’s as burdened because he doesn’t have to make every play for everybody all the time with what we’re trying to do. He can give it up and still have a chance to get it back. He’s said that he feels as fresh as he’s ever felt in his career because he doesn’t feel the pressure of making every single play.”

Nash said that. He also said he deferred to much and tried to get the Princeton sets going rather than calling his own number and that he needed to be more aggressive. He said he was thinking too much.

Last season the Lakers ran more traditional NBA sets and thought teams defended those too easily. Kobe Bryant and others wanted a return to a read-and-react offense. But when you have an abundance of talent simple makes some sense. It’s old Vince Lombardi football theory — you can run the power sweep all the time, and if you have the talent and can execute it the other team will not be able to stop it even if they know it is coming.

But now the Lakers are committed to the more complex series where Nash is supposed to push the ball on the break and then if it’s not there choose between pick-and-roll or Princeton or other standard sets. I can’t imagine why that is taking a while to get down.

But the Lakers knew the offense might take a while to come on line, it was their defense that was going to keep them afloat until then. Of course, through two games the Lakers defense has been worse than the Bobcats’ last season (literally, they are giving up five more points per 100 possessions than the worst team in NBA history). Part of that is the turnovers leading to easy buckets. And part of that is Dwight Howard is not right and a dominant defensive force. And part of it is effort.

It’s a whole lot of things that have the Lakers 0-2. And while it’s too early to panic or vote Mike Brown out of his chair (he’s lucky the patient Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak have the only votes that count) the Lakers have a lot of things to fix.