Super Max: Is Max Christie a legit rotational player for the Lakers?

Key Highlights:

• Christie’s combination of point-of-attack defense, length, off-ball awareness, and defensive rebounding might make him Los Angeles’ best perimeter defender
• Christie is a better shooter than his 3-point percentage this year indicates
• Christie could be the perfect fifth player in Lakers’ closing lineup in the playoffs

Last week, in his column “Four Things With Frank,” our senior writer Jackson Frank talked about how Max Christie was starting to find a role with the Los Angeles Lakers in his second season in the NBA. Well, one week later, and Christie is continuing to kill it for the Purple and Gold.

But what is exactly is Christie doing? And what does it mean for the Lakers and their title hopes this season?

What Is Christie Doing?

Despite being just 20 years old, Christie may already have a claim as the Lakers’ best point-of-attack defender. Christie’s thin, but it works to his advantage when he’s defending on the perimeter, as he’s light on his feet and slithery when he’s navigating through screens.

The two aren’t related, but Christie’s on-ball mixtape looks eerily familiar to the one put together by former Laker enemy Doug Christie back in the early 2000s.

Christie’s combination of quick feet and hip fluidity was on perfect display as he was putting Donovan Mitchell in handcuffs to help seal the deal on the Cleveland Cavaliers on a Saturday night in late November.

Under a minute on the clock, Max stepped up & locked down 🗜️ pic.twitter.com/OVVUevXrj2

— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) November 26, 2023

In the last couple of weeks, Christie has drawn matchups against the likes of Mitchell, Darius Garland, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyrese Maxey, Fred VanVleet, and Kyrie Irving. Some of those matchups were more successful against him than others, but none of them looked to be out of his league.

(Sidebar: If I had to share one nitpick, it would be that Christie can be a little too eager to navigate an incoming screen at times. This leaves him susceptible to well-timed screen rejections from ball handlers.)

Christie isn’t just an on-ball specialist, either. He’s the multi-faceted defender that contending teams crave in the year 2023. Christie has a near 6’9 wingspan, which enables him to eat space on the defensive side of the ball. He’s also got a good motor and strong sense of where he and his assignment are on the floor at all times. These attributes combine to make him a good off-ball defender.

On top of all that, Christie is a good rebounder for his position. On the season, Christie is in the 70th percentile among wings in defensive rebounding percentage on missed field goals (per Cleaning the Glass).

Overall, Christie looks like the kind of defensive player who can man a primary perimeter slot for the Lakers in the playoffs. But what about his offense?

To make it in the playoffs on offense when you aren’t a primary ball handler or rim runner/screen setter, you need to be able to provide value off the basketball.

This usually comes in the form of spacing (something this Lakers’ team desperately needs), which is usually (but not entirely) based on a player’s shooting prowess. At a glance, Christie’s 31.4% (35 attempts) 3-point conversion rate on the season reeks of non-shooter. However, his indicators suggest that Christie is a better marksman than that number suggests.

Last season (between his NBA minutes and his time in the G-League), Christie shot 38.7% from downtown on 150 3-point attempts. During the 2023 Summer League and the preseason, Christie hit 14 of 34 threes (41.7%). Altogether, that’s a 3-point mark of 39.1% on nearly 200 attempts (184, to be exact).

(Sidebar #2: Christie’s free throw shooting numbers are also pretty impressive. For his NBA career, Christie is an 85.7% shooter from the charity stripe. That matters because free throws are a good context-independent measure of a player’s shooting ability.)

Along with Christie’s potential as a shooter, his verticality (79th percentile max vertical in the 2022 NBA Draft Combine) and rebounding instincts make him a suitable candidate for cuts and dynamic lob finishes.

And while it remains to be seen what the extent of his on-ball offensive value will be, Christie has shown some signs of being able to put the ball on the floor. This season, 36% of Christie’s field goal attempts have come after taking three or more dribbles (per NBA.com). At the very least, Christie can be counted on to attack closeouts. Like this:

What Does This Mean For Los Angeles?

Last postseason, the Lakers struggled to find a fifth guy to round out their closing five who could defend without hurting their spacing (and provide spacing without hurting their defense). We’ve seen time and time again that being able to find a five-man rotation that provides the perfect balance of offense and defense can make all the difference in the postseason (see the 2022-23 Denver Nuggets).

As it stands, you can write the names of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves, and Rui Hachimura in pen to close out games against most matchups. But who will their fifth guy be? D’Angelo Russell is a good offensive player, but he’s a massive liability on defense (especially with Reaves already out there on the floor). On the end of the spectrum, Jarred Vanderbilt is a great defender, but his lack of outside shooting completely craters the team’s spacing.

Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish are more balanced options than those two. But the latter is a below-average shooter (career 32.2% 3-point shooter), while the former struggles doing anything on offense outside of shooting (only 11.5% of Prince’s shots come after three or more dribbles).

There’s a chance that Christie can serve as the perfect fifth option to round out the quartet that led the Lakers all the way to the Conference Finals last year. There’s also a chance that his recent stretch of success is merely one of the countless anomalies that take place during the grueling NBA regular season. But the possibility of the former taking place (and the fact that he’s a young player on the Los Angeles freaking Lakers) make Christie worth keeping tabs on moving forward.