The Los Angeles Lakers were easily the betting favorites to win the Western Conference and many even thought that they would cruise to a championship during the offseason. However, that has certainly not been the case. Fast forward to this moment in time, and the Lakers are the ninth seed out in the West. They have a 26-31 overall record. To put that into further perspective, the New Orleans Pelicans without Zion Williamson are sitting at 23-35. This is a Lakers team that has LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook on it.
There are multiple reasons as to why this team just isn’t good right now, though LeBron doesn’t seem like one of them. Despite getting up there in age, he has been their only bright spot for the most part. Anthony Davis on the other hand has been consistently injured. His refusal to play the center position consistently also hurt them badly during the regular season. That isn’t even mentioning the fact that he was one of their worst jump shooters through the first quarter of the year. To dive deeper into that statistic, Davis had a point about two weeks ago when he was shooting 17.9 percent from behind the arc and 38.8 percent from the midrange. As a superstar piece on this roster, those numbers won’t cut it. He has to get his hands dirty and play in the paint. Taking jump shots like that isn’t helping his team. Finally, Russell Westbrook just isn’t a fit on this roster. They are expecting him to be a solid playmaker and scorer but that isn’t happening. He is shooting horribly from the field and can’t seem to hit layups either, shooting under 45 percent in that area. He also turns the ball over roughly four times a contest.
Let’s take a look outside their stars though because the problem is clearly a lot deeper than them. Los Angeles thought that they would be able to grab a ton of minimum contracts during the offseason and build a three-point shooting squad around James. However, the team doesn’t play defense because they are all up there in age. Guys like Carmelo Anthony and Wayne Ellington won’t give you much defensively. Players like this are filled on the roster, and they are ranked towards the bottom five in points allowed per game. They opted to go down this route instead of shelling out some extra cash to bring in Alex Caruso. Caruso as we all know got paid on the Chicago Bulls and is critical to their recent success.
Lastly, we have to cover their atrocious trade deadline. This team obviously isn’t good enough to contend for a championship right now. So, they decided that they wouldn’t do anything at all before the trade deadline passed, making zero moves. There were a lot of players moved that day, including Buddy Hield, a guard that they didn’t pull the trigger on during the offseason. Los Angeles instead wanted to focus on the buy-out market which isn’t good at all. The management doesn’t really seem to know that they are doing when building this roster. There isn’t any identity to it. James is doing everything he can to keep them afloat, but there is a serious possibility that this team doesn’t make the playoffs. Changes need to be made. This is a bad team right now.