Alex Caruso's case for minutes is stronger than ever

Alex Caruso’s case for minutes is stronger than ever

Sports

LOS ANGELES — LeBron James knows how this stuff works because he’s been the front-runner countless times.

As Alex Caruso dashed ahead of him on the fast break, heading quickly toward E’Twaun Moore, James shouted ahead: “Trailing middle! Trailing middle!”

The signal had been sent. It was up to Caruso to get it behind him. So he did it through his legs, a panache that LeBron can appreciate. After all, James did it himself back in December on a pass to Dwight Howard.

This pass, like James’, turned into one of the most memorable highlights of the season: a towering one-handed jam by James as Josh Hart looked up helplessly. The Staples Center crowd stood up for two possessions afterward, buzzing with excitement.

“Listen, myself and AC, we work well together,” James said. “AC has eyes in the back of his head and for me to be able to finish it, it’s a good play for our ballclub. A momentum play. Our fans loved it and it’s great to be a part of it.”

Caruso, the 25-year-old former G-Leaguer, creates a few of these momentum plays per game. On Tuesday night in the win over the Pelicans, he also had a jaw-dropping block of Lonzo Ball, and an and-one lay-up that got his bench jumping. 

Such plays are anecdotal evidence that Caruso is a truly essential rotation player for the West-leading Lakers. Along with his meme-ability, it’s created an unusual mix for a compelling fan favorite. But added to the statistical evidence, his case for a more consistent role is impossible to ignore.

Even many of the casual fans now know that Caruso and James form the two-man combination with the highest net rating in the NBA. For the uninitiated: This is a measurement of how players outscore their opponents per 100 possessions. A duo that keeps the score of a game perfectly tied would have a net rating of zero. James and Caruso outscore opponents by 24.7 points for every 100 possessions they share on the floor together, more than any other pairing that’s played at least 150 minutes.

That requires some context, like who plays alongside them in those lineups. It’s worth noting that just about everyone gets a net rating boost while playing alongside a player as dominant as James. But it’s a number that Frank Vogel and his staff also track closely, and they’ve had to acknowledge it as the season has progressed.

“There’s the eye test, but LeBron and Alex is … one of our best combinations throughout the season from a net rating standpoint,” he said last week. “We’ll continue to explore ways that that’s getting out there enough without overdoing it.”

If you took a poll of fans, many of them would very much want to overdo it. If this lineup is so good, they cry, why take out Caruso at all?

These discussions lack nuance. There’s a lot of assumptions being made about the push and pull of Caruso’s minutes, which admittedly have fluctuated even during a stretch when he’s been productive. There’s the assumption that there’s a direct correlation with the minutes of Rajon Rondo, who many fans are loudly calling to be benched seemingly forever. There’s the assumption that more minutes automatically translates to more production and bigger leads. There’s the assumption that Vogel and his staff will use the regular season rotation when the Lakers enter the playoffs.

These very off-kilter guidelines serve to skew what Caruso is: a helpful complimentary player. His one truly elite skill is his defense. Cleaning the Glass has him among the 95th percentile at his position in steal percentage (2.8), and he has had consistent good games defensively. He’s also a better-than average offensive rebounder. But Caruso is also an OK 3-point shooter (35 percent) and a solid but not spectacular assist man (12.8 percent, just 20th percentile among guards). He’s never scored more than 16 points this season, in a game he played 30 minutes. 

If you projected Caruso’s numbers out to per 36 minute figures, he’d only average 11 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.6

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