How To Fix the Lakers…Without Touching Their Defense

The Los Angeles Lakers are no stranger to scrutiny, but the scrutiny they have been under the last few weeks is high even for them. What seemed to be a run of bad luck with injuries and close losses exploded on Tuesday night when they went into Cleveland and got beat down by Kyrie Irving, Anderson Varejao…and little else. Their defense, analysts agree, seems to be their biggest problem. The Lakers’ wings are old and slow, and the addition of Steve Nash will do nothing but exacerbate their perimeter defense problems even further. Dwight Howard looks like a shell of the man that was the best defensive center since Hakeem Olajuwon. Their bench was thin at the beginning of the year – even before losing Nash and Gasol to injury. Antawn Jamison is one of the worst defensive players in the league. Kobe Bryant – despite all of his First Team Defensive awards – has slipped dramatically on the defensive end. Much of the talk the last few days has focused on their transition defense – or lac...