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Los Angeles Lakers
Aug 8, 2025 7:27 AM EDT
The Lakers are taking a gamble on oft-injured point guard Marcus Smart this season, hoping that he can be the defensive stopper he was for so long with Boston. On a team that has glaring defensive liabilities all over the top of the roster–Austin Reaves, Luka Doncic, Deandre Ayton–Smart’s ability to hinder offenses at the point of attack could be a key to the 2025-26 season.
Smart played only 34 games last year between Washington and Memphis, as he dealt with finger injuries. When he did play, he wasn’t very good, averaging 9.0 points on 39.3% shooting, and not looking like the player he was when he won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2022.
Smart is 31, so it’s not like he is over the hill. The hope is that, being put back into a competitive environment will help the Lakers squeeze the most out of him.
Lakers Should Bench Rui Hachimura
But for the Lakers to do that, he will need to be on the floor. With Ayton taking over at center, the Lakers need to find a spot for Smart in the rotation, and it has pretty much been agreed that L.A. needs to find a spot for him to start.
That would mean sending either Austin Reaves or Rui Hachimura to the bench. For Lakers beat writer Jovan Buha of The Athletic, the pick is easy: start Smart, put Reaves (a more natural guard) at shooting guard, move Hachimura to the bench.
“With the defensive matchups with Smart vs. Rui vs. Austin is if you have Smart defensively as a 1-3, or maybe even as a 1-4, depending on who the 4 is, if he’s guarding a wing, you still need a backcourt defender out there,” Buha said on his ‘Buha’s Block” podcast.
“If a team that has two elite backcourt players, like say, for example, you’re playing Cleveland and he’s on Donovan Mitchell or Darius Garland, you still need someone else for that other guy. And for me, if Austin is coming off the bench and you’re starting three other forwards, one of those guys is going to have to downscale to defending a Garland or a Mitchell. And that would probably be Rui. And I think that is a notable mismatch.”
Trying to force Hachimura–or James, or Doncic–to keep up with guards with Reaves on the bench would not be a good choice for the Lakers.
“I just think that would be a mistake,” Buha said. “So, I think that even from a matchup perspective, you have Austin guarding the secondary backcourt guy, Smart guarding the primary guy and then Luka nd LeBron as the two forwards, and Ayton as the center.”
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Sean Deveney