Lending assist to Lakers’ cause

Lakers assistant coach Frank Hamblen stood by his work on the whiteboard in the team’s locker room before a recent game against Sacramento, viewing all the lines, numbers and diagrams for that night’s game plan.

When Derek Fisher strolled by, Hamblen pulled him aside.

“How did we say we were going to play” Beno Udrih, the Kings’ point guard, Hamblen asked.

Fisher eyed the board and answered, “We’re going to go over the top of the screen” to force Udrih into the paint.

All the Lakers’ assistant coaches have moments during the season when the spotlight is on them, particularly when they present their scouting report for the next game.

Each season Lakers Coach Phil Jackson passes out scouting assignments for the other 29 NBA teams to his assistants: Hamblen, Kurt Rambis, Jim Cleamons and Brian Shaw. Then it’s their job to scout the teams on their list.

“We all pride ourselves in having our teams down cold, so all you’ve got to do is take the game plan to the floor and we’re good,” Cleamons said. “But some nights it’s not that way. So you hope on your night, on your scout, these horses are ready to run.”

Usually, the assistants share the work load evenly.

But now Rambis is also in charge of the Lakers’ defense, so this season he is responsible for only three opposing teams (including Boston). Hamblen has eight (Utah is among them), Cleamons nine (San Antonio) and Shaw nine (Portland).

Shaw said each assistant is responsible for tracking their assigned teams throughout the season, even if there is a prolonged period when the Lakers don’t play them.

“I have to keep watching all of my teams play because there’s going to be a time where I’ll have to scout three or four in a row and if I try to wait until the last minute to watch them, then I’ll be letting everybody down,” Shaw said.

Before each game an assistant coach diagrams plays in the Lakers’ locker room to outline offensive sets and schemes for that night’s opponent. Rambis says the idea is to present the players with the strengths and weaknesses of a team and likely sequences of plays.

The assistants give a lecture about their scouting reports the day before a game, at shootaround the morning of a game, and then half an hour before tip-off. They also show videos before practice.

“I’ve seen some [scouting] reports that are a half-inch thick” from other coaches, said Rambis, now in his seventh season as Jackson’s assistant. “You can’t show a team that many plays. You probably get about a half-dozen . . . that they are going to be able to pay attention to or they are going to be able to understand.”

Jackson’s assistant coaches go through a checklist: they break down where a rival player likes to shoot from on the court, if he drives left or right, is better at working off screens and on which side of the court suits him best. They study if a player uses one or two dribbles before shooting.

“It actually is a chess match,” said Cleamons, who spent seven seasons on Jackson’s bench in Chicago and is in his eighth with the Lakers. “It’s all set up based on the [opposing] coach, the team personalities within the scheme and how defensively you’re geared to stop people.”

None of this strategy works, though, if their players don’t pay attention.

“Everybody has so many superstitions and routines that they are doing before games,” Shaw said. “So a lot of times you’re up there talking and guys are doing push-ups or he’s cutting his nails. . . . So sometimes to keep them engaged, what you do is turn the table and ask them a question. So now they are like, ‘If I start daydreaming or something, I know when Brian does the board, he may call me out so I better pay attention.’ ”

The game hasn’t changed so much that Hamblen, Rambis, Cleamons and Shaw probably haven’t seen it before.

“So even if coaches get hired and fired and they go on to different places, you still have a familiarity with them because you’ve been tracking this coach or that team over the years,” Shaw said.

“You always know that [Charlotte’s] Larry Brown-coached teams play this way and they run this type of sets.”

During a game the Lakers’ assistants open their notebooks to pull out pieces of paper with their scouting reports, with bullet points to remind players about an opponent’s shooting percentage, his free-throw skills, stats on that team’s last game against the Lakers, and various diagrams of plays.

“I also try to get into the [opposing] coach, what he’s thinking, what [play] he’s going to run out of timeouts,” said Hamblen, the longest-tenured assistant coach in the NBA with 40 years of experience.

“If there is a pattern -- you’ve watched five or six games -- to what they are doing, then you go to Phil. You’re guessing obviously. ‘This is probably what they are going to run out of this timeout. This is what they are going to run at the end of the game.’ So you want to tell the players to be aware of this,” Hamblen said.

The assistants take pride in their scouting reports, but they also have fun with the process.

After the season, they tally up to see who had the best won-loss record.

None of them would divulge the winner from last season.

“I’ve always said that who ends up with the best record should do them all the following season,” Rambis said, laughing. “No one has ever bought into that.”

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Tale of the tapes

The Lakers’ assistant coaches are responsible for scouting the other 29 NBA teams and working up game plans. Here’s the breakdown for this season:

*--* COACH TEAMS TO SCOUT Kurt Rambis Boston Celtics, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns. Brian Shaw Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Charlotte Bobcats, Philadelphia 76ers, Chicago Bulls, Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks, Memphis Grizzlies. Frank Hamblen Sacramento Kings, Clippers, Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers, Utah Jazz, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets. Jim Cleamons New Jersey Nets, Dallas Mavericks, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, San Antonio Spurs, New Orleans Hornets, Houston Rockets, New York Knicks, Indiana Pacers. *--*