The Los Angeles Lakers season just can’t stop getting worse and worse. We saw this squad get listed as heavy NBA Championship favorites all throughout the offseason. Obviously, we had pretty high hopes for them. Since the year began, it was clear that they just weren’t working well together and that their roster simply isn’t deep enough to contend for a title. Some believed that it was just a matter of injuries and chemistry messing them up so far. However, it is getting apparent that it is a deeper issue.
The Lakers stand at 29-40 on the season. We have covered a few of the reasons why they are struggling, but now their troubles are taking a whole new level. They just got blown out by the recently improved Minnesota Timberwolves. A young and scrappy team that has taken a large leap compared to last season. During the game, Timberwolves players were letting the Lakers have it. When the game ended, star center Karl Anthony Towns raised his hand up into the air and waved goodbye to the Lakers as they walked out of the arena. Towns also hauled in a rebound after Russell Westbrook airballed a three pointer and did a double take to the ball and where it was going with a perplexed look. That wasn’t all either. Patrick Beverley ripped the ball away from Westbrook early on in the game and then proceeded to plug his nose and mouth the word trash multiple times.
When peppered with questions about the heckling throughout the game, Westbrook said, “I honestly don’t pay no mind to it. Maybe the other guys do. But they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to individual guys particularly, but the trash talking doesn’t bother me none. Nobody over there has done anything in this league that would make me pick my eyes up, like, oh, they’re talking mess. Let me respond. No. It’s fine. They’re good. They won the game. Happy for them. Move onto the next one.”
As you might expect, this type of response did not go unnoticed by Wolves players. Beverley in particular was the first to respond on Twitter. He said, “Playoffs every year. 2 western conference finals with 2 different teams individual stats or team stats? I thought it was a team sport??”
Moving onto how LeBron James felt about all of this noise. LeBron was visibly upset leaving the court and you could tell that frustration was starting to boil over as of late. He said, “It’s part of the game” when asked about the trash talking sent his way. He also made it clear that the constant losing is start to wear down on his patience as he figures out any way to help his team turn it around.
We are going to see in the next few weeks if the Lakers are good enough to make a late playoff push and potential make some noise later on. As it stands, this squad is closer to the 13th seed out in the Western Conference then it is the eighth seed. Yes, that is a real statistic.