Gregg Popovich has a principle that has become an ideal many coaches strive to impart on their players. “His emphasis is 0.5,” Myles Turner explained while playing for Popovich on Team USA in 2019. “You have half a second, shoot it, pass it and go.” That’s the basic concept. Whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s shooting, passing or driving, make the decision to do it in half of a second. Don’t hold the ball. Don’t wait. Pressure the defense with quick decision-making.
It’s a sound principle for the overwhelming majority of NBA players. It’s not one that LeBron James has ever really needed to live by. When you’re arguably the greatest player of all time, you’re allowed to operate at your own pace. James, in the half court, has tended to play relatively slowly, to pound the rock and survey the defense before committing to an attack plan. Last season, James held the ball for an average of 3.87 seconds per touch and took an average 2.92 dribbles per touch. At his peak as a Laker, those figures got as high as 4.85 seconds per touch and 3.85 dribbles per touch.
This was never an issue for a Lakers team that was built entirely around him, or any team that was built around him for that matter. Pretty much until he turned 40, there wasn’t a player in the NBA you’d rather have running your offense than James, so by all means, LeBron, dribble your heart out. This form of offense was remarkably effective. It also probably wasn’t sustainable for this new version of the Lakers.
Entering Tuesday night, Luka Dončić was averaging around 5.22 seconds per touch and 4.35 dribbles per touch. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that when you’re generating as much as Dončić does with those slow possessions, but with Austin Reaves holding the ball nearly as long and dribbling even more, the Lakers ran the very real risk of getting stale offensively. It’s harder to keep role players engaged when a few players are monopolizing possessions and dribbling the clock out. The ball finds energy. As it moves, so too do players.
James seemingly recognized that in a remarkably selfless season debut. That showed up in the box score with 12 assists, obviously, but racking up assists has never been an issue for James. The “how” here matters as much as the result. James emphasized making quick decisions and keeping the ball moving, holding the ball for just 2.46 seconds per touch and dribbling only 1.63 times per touch. Perhaps not quite half a second per decision, but far closer than James tends to get. For a team that ranks last in the league in passes per game, that energy proved infectious. The Lakers scored 140 points in their win over the Jazz Tuesday despite shooting just 11 of 32 from deep.
This works so well because, well, it’s LeBron James. He’s acutely aware of the ways in which he bends defenses, so if he’s operating with an emphasis on quick decision-making, he knows exactly how a defense is going to respond to the threat of him scoring and therefore where the open pass will be. Take this quick pick-and-roll. One dribble. Jusuf Nurkić steps up to the level of the screen. James sneaks the pocket pass between him and Cody Williams.
This works because James knows that the defense is more concerned about the threat of him going downhill than Jaxson Hayes. It works even better when James isn’t just a downhill threat, but actively attacking in the moment. Of course Nurkić took his eyes off of the trailing Deandre Ayton. LeBron James is driving at him.
It’s one thing to do this off of misses, where transition is a given. James even made a point of pressuring the defense off of made shots, catching Utah off guard by turning on the jets before they’re set. Watch the eyes here. All 10 of them in a Jazz uniform are fixed on LeBron.
These are passes James has always made, but they were a clear point of emphasis in his first game of the season. Even when the game slowed down and he was dribbling in place, he seemed to have a supernatural awareness of where Ayton was. Gotta keep the big man happy.
James has a reputation as a fairly heliocentric ball-handler, someone who wants to make every decision and control every element of the game. But he’s always been much more chameleonic. We’re talking about one of the few players in league history who can genuinely play all five positions. He’s won championships with high-usage guards and unicorn big men. His superpower has always been his ability to check whatever box his team needs, whether it’s offensive or defensive, on the ball or off of it.
And what these Lakers need, more than anything, is a connector. Dončić and Reaves can handle the bulk of the individual creation, but they’re going to do it their way. That’s a lot of dribbling, a lot of drive-and-kick, and a lot of possessions in which the role players are stationary. That’s obviously effective with ball-handlers this good, but it risks seeping into the way everyone else plays. Dončić and Reaves may pound the rock, but everyone else needs to be cutting, needs to be screening, needs to be flying around the court on defense.
The version of James the Lakers got on Tuesday was one that enabled all of those things by rewarding role players for doing role player things. He kept everyone energized and engaged with those quick decisions, providing a needed contrast to the existing structure the Lakers built.
James will get more comfortable playing his more standard, superstar style as he gets healthier. Conditioning is obviously a work in progress for a quadragenarian dealing with sciatica. The average time and dribbles per touch is going to go up. LeBron James isn’t suddenly going to become Boris Diaw. But if the debut was any indication, he’s very aware of what this team has and what it needs. He’s fitting into a roster that was already thriving rather than forcing it to conform to him. Even if he isn’t quite making half-second decisions, a slightly faster version of James is going to pay major dividends for the Lakers moving forward.
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