CBS Sports’ preseason ranking of every NBA defense puts the Lakers exactly in the middle, at No. 15. The reasoning is simple: Walker Kessler gives Los Angeles a real rim protector for the first time in the Luka Dončić era, but the rest of the defense depends on whether its best defenders can stay on the floor.
A Middle-of-the-Pack Projection for a Bottom-10 Defense
This ranking is a forecast of the season-ending defensive rating leaderboard, not a judgment of what each defense looks like at its best. Seen that way, 15th is a real step up. CBS lists the Lakers’ 2025-26 defensive rating: 115.5 (20th).
CBS’s argument is that pairing a drop scheme with Kessler fits a team built this heavily around offense. The worry is the minutes when he sits. The ranking says “I have no earthly idea how they’re getting stops in the minutes Kessler doesn’t play”. It closes with a conditional: if Matisse Thybulle, Jarred Vanderbilt and Adou Thiero can stay on the court, the Lakers are probably the third-best team in the West.
The National Read Lands in the Same Range
The CBS ranking isn’t an outlier. A Yahoo Sports Pacific Division preview, published a day earlier, set the Lakers’ realistic range at 18th or 15th and argued they can’t reach their ceiling as a bottom-10 unit. That preview also warned that anything short of an elite offense and serviceable defense could leave them vulnerable to the play-in picture. Yardbarker’s late-summer ranking was slightly kinder and slotted the Lakers 13th.
ESPN’s offseason recap pointed to the perimeter. It named Quentin Grimes the team’s biggest X factor because the best defensive options — Thybulle and Jarred Vanderbilt — are near zeroes on the offensive end. The Lakers paid him handsomely in free agency (four years, $60 million) to be the two-way answer.
The most optimistic voice is inside the building. Kessler told reporters in late September, “I think we’re gonna be a nasty defensive team”. No national projection supports that.
Fifteenth Is the Right Number
CBS has it right, and the reason is that every outside view keeps coming back to the same problem. The Lakers have one excellent defensive specialist at each level, Kessler at the rim and Thybulle on the ball. Their other defenders who could cover for Dončić and Austin Reaves are either questions on offense or questions on health. Last season’s numbers show how much the Lakers needed a rim anchor. They still ranked 28th in defensive rebounding rate and allowed the fifth-most shots in the restricted area. Kessler fixes much of that profile on his own, which explains the five-spot jump.
Getting past 15th is harder. It would take Grimes defending at the point of attack while making enough threes to stay on the floor, which ESPN put at closer to his 2024-25 clip (38.5%) than his 2025-26 rate (33.4%). It also requires the scheme to hold together. In its own coach rankings, CBS credited JJ Redick with building the most switch-heavy defense in the NBA when he had no rim protector. A drop scheme built around Kessler would be a different system for many of the same players.
The upside case is real. If Kessler plays 70-plus games and Thybulle stays healthy, a finish around 12th is plausible, and that would make this team very dangerous given its offense. CBS has the Lakers third on that end. The downside is just as clear: one Kessler injury probably sends them back toward 20th. Fifteenth is roughly the midpoint of those two outcomes, and that’s why it’s the right projection.
Source: CBS Sports
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