Collin Sexton Is Studying Marcus Smart and Avery Bradley to Reinvent His Defense

LOS ANGELES — Collin Sexton knows what the scouting report says. He has known it for eight NBA seasons, across five teams in six years, through All-Rookie honors and a 24.3-points-per-game scoring season and the knee injury that nearly ended everything. The report says he can shoot. The report says he can score. And the report says — sooner or later, in every locker room he has ever walked into — that he cannot guard. At Lakers media day this week, the team’s newest guard stood at a microphone and told reporters he has spent his offseason trying to erase that last part of the book.

“I’ve been dialing in a little bit more on the defensive side,” Sexton told reporters at media day, via Silver Screen and Roll. “I know how much I can impact ball pressure, how I can start picking up full court and just be disruptive on the defensive end. I think not doing it always but picking and choosing the flow of the game and trying to change the pace of the game a little bit on the defensive side.”

The admission matters because of where Sexton is and when he is arriving. The Lakers have turned the page on the LeBron James years, and the Luka Doncic era is officially underway. The roster has been overhauled around him — Rui Hachimura, Luke Kennard and Jaxson Hayes all departed this summer — and the backcourt lost one of its most physical defenders when Marcus Smart left in free agency and signed with the Houston Rockets after feeling disrespected by the Lakers’ offer. Head coach JJ Redick has made defensive principles the theme of training camp. In that environment, Sexton’s comments were less a confession than a job application.

Stealing from the pests

Sexton did not just say he wants to defend. He named names — two former Lakers guards whose film he has been studying all summer.

The first is Smart. “Even just watching Marcus [Smart] last year, that was his job,” Sexton told reporters at media day, via Silver Screen and Roll. “He would come in, be so physical off the ball, on the ball. He was just a pest.”

Smart, the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year with Boston in 2022, arrived in Los Angeles and immediately became the team’s tone-setter on that end of the floor: the player who picked up ball-handlers 94 feet from the basket, who got into passing lanes, who made opposing offenses uncomfortable before they ever reached their first action. That is exactly the job description now sitting open in the Lakers’ backcourt, and Sexton is auditioning for it in public.

The second is Avery Bradley. “I watched some film of Avery Bradley as well when he was here, and how he just never got screened, how he was always fighting through anything, and how his competitive juice helped the team win,” Sexton said.

Bradley, a two-time All-Defensive selection with the Boston Celtics before his Lakers stint, built his reputation on the exact skill Sexton has never had: navigating screens. Where Sexton has historically been criticized for poor screen navigation and over-aggressive closeouts — lunging, gambling, getting pinned on picks — Bradley made a career out of slipping through the narrowest cracks, staying attached to ball-handlers through every switch and every re-screen.

“I think those two guys really help see a role that I feel like I can compete in because I know what I can do offensively,” Sexton said. “I feel like I can shoot, I can score... on the defensive side, those two guys are something that I’ve been really focusing in on, watching, stealing things from, for sure.”

He called Bradley “my guy” — a personal connection, not just an archival reference. This is not a player picking names out of a film library. These are guards he has watched closely, played against, and now wants to become.

The hole Smart left behind

Smart’s departure is the wound Sexton’s film study is trying to dress. The veteran guard left Los Angeles in free agency and signed with the Houston Rockets, reportedly believing the Lakers’ offer did not reflect what he had given them. However it went down, the result is the same: the Lakers lost their most physical backcourt defender, and head coach JJ Redick has spent training camp hammering defensive principles into a reshaped roster.

Sexton is not freelancing on this. He told reporters at media day that he has already worked through the plan with the staff. “Me and the coaches, we’ve been talking is how I can bring that competitive juice and ball pressure,” he said, via ClutchPoints. Full-court pickup. Disruption. Changing the pace of the game from the defensive end — the vocabulary is straight out of the Smart playbook, and now it is the coaches’ language too.

A franchise turned the page

The fit matters because the job has changed. This is no longer the Lakers of the LeBron James era — that chapter is over, and the Luka Doncic era has begun. The franchise spent the summer rebuilding the roster around Doncic’s gravity: Hachimura, Kennard and Hayes all moved on, and Sexton signed a multi-year deal (reports differ on the exact length) to bring scoring punch and spacing off the bench.

On paper, it works. Doncic has always been at his best with backcourt partners who can shoot, and Sexton’s 40.1 percent from three last season — 38.9 for his career — is exactly that. But Doncic lineups have always needed defenders who can cover for what he does not do, and that is where Sexton’s reputation has been the problem. A guard who can shoot next to Doncic but cannot navigate a screen is a playoff liability. A guard who can do both is exactly what the Lakers have been missing since Smart walked out the door.

The long road to Los Angeles

Sexton’s urgency is the urgency of a player who has seen how fast this league moves on. Drafted eighth overall by Cleveland in 2018, he earned All-Rookie Second Team honors and broke out with 24.3 points per game in 2020-21 — a genuine young star trajectory. Then a knee injury derailed him, and he has been rebuilding ever since: a revitalization with the Utah Jazz, then a 2025-26 season split between the Charlotte Hornets and the Chicago Bulls.

The Lakers are his fifth team in six seasons. The offense has never been the question — 15.4 points a night last season, efficient three-point shooting, a downhill attacking game that has survived every stop. The question, everywhere he has gone, has been the same one: can he be trusted on the defensive end? Poor screen navigation, over-aggressiveness, the gambling that turns into blow-bys. Eight seasons in, Sexton is finally saying out loud what every coach has been thinking.

Camp will tell the truth

The analysts are clear-eyed about the stakes: Sexton’s shooting makes him valuable, but he has to reach at least adequate defensive standards to log heavy minutes in a rotation that is supposed to contend. Film study is a promise; practices and early games are the receipts. Whether full-court pressure and screen-fighting show up in October will decide whether Sexton is a rotation fixture or another stop on the tour.

For now, though, the intention is unmistakable. A player with his scoring résumé rarely volunteers that defense is the thing standing between him and a major role — and rarely names the two players he intends to steal it from. “Those two guys are something that I’ve been really focusing in on, watching, stealing things from, for sure,” he said. In the Luka Doncic era, with a backcourt hole to fill and a coaching staff demanding it, Collin Sexton has picked his models. Now he has to become them.

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