The Lakers' defense is the best in the NBA, giving up a meager 86.7 points per game through their first seven contests this season.
Whats more, the Lakers are holding opponents to 40.2 percent shooting.
Impressive as those statistics may be, it's the way the Lakers are suffocating top opposing offensive threats that has been jaw-dropping.
"I think mentally we've made the decision that defense is going to be a top priority,"
guard Derek Fisher said Wednesday. "I do think that the pain of our experience of last season (losing to Boston in the Finals) ... has given us some hunger and desire to be better than we were."
Until the New Orleans Hornets' top scoring pair of Chris Paul and David West went to work, the Lakers had been muzzling the opposition's best offensive threats. Paul scored 30 points and West added 21.
The Lakers faced only half of the Dallas Mavericks' top scoring tandem of Josh Howard and Dirk Nowitzki on Tuesday. Howard sat out his second straight game because of a left wrist injury, and Nowitzki scored 14 points on 5-for-17 shooting.
With power forward Pau Gasol hounding him at every turn, Nowitzki did not score in the fourth quarter as the Lakers rallied to win, 106-99. Nowitzki's last points came on a jump shot with 10:14 left in the third quarter.
That defensive clamp-down came two nights after they held the Houston Rockets' high-scoring tandem of Tracy McGrady to three points on 1-for-11 shooting and Ron Artest to eight points on 2-for-11 shooting in Sunday night's 29-point victory.
And that show of strength came days after the Lakers held the Clippers' Baron Davis to 17 points on 7-for-21 shooting and Chris Kaman to six points on 3-for-4 shooting in an 18-point victory.
And that came a few nights after they held the Denver Nuggets' Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony to 13 points apiece in a seven-point victory.
Mixed messages: The NBA has posted a new anti-gambling notice in locker rooms this season in the wake of the Tim Donaghy betting scandal. The warning was posted in the visiting locker room at the New Orleans Arena, but there were also ads for a local casino.
"We talked about this last year,"
Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "We thought it wasn't a good message at all. One side of it is saying, `Don't gamble.' But the other side is an advertisement for it. This is a franchise that's led by a Christian leader (owner George Shinn). He has a prayer before every game. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."
