I hearken back to last season in moments like these. Moments when I was ridiculed, berated and told to “stop worrying” when I brought up the incredible number of turnovers the team coughed up last season. In the moments that I thought to myself, “Maybe I am worrying about nothing…?” I would, as I generally do, stick to my guns and continue to insist it was an issue that could (and ended up being a major culprit in) derailing our repeat title hopes. This season, since we solidified the roster, the defense has been my #1 concern as it would seem both on paper and in reality that this team couldn’t stop a hobbled turtle from escaping. In short, this Laker team has some major issues to address.
- 115. That’s the minimum number of points the Lakers have allowed in every single game this season. Don’t worry, we’ve allowed even more in some games, too! This continues a trend in preseason (which some believe doesn’t matter at all, I feel differently) where we gave up an average of 119.3 points per game. So, while one might assume that things would improve once the intensity of the regular season became a factor and the games really matter, in reality it’s gotten slightly worse as we now are giving up 119.6 points per game. That’s a number that will get coach Vogel canned sooner than later. If a defense-first coach can’t get a team to buy in and/or execute the defense then the defense-first coach becomes expendable. Especially when the roster has been filled out with minimum contract players.
- The minimum contract players. I was worried about the composition of the roster before preseason and it’s a full blown concern now. The issue isn’t that the roster doesn’t have talent, one could actually make a point that the talent level is possibly too high and we need more yeoman type of guys to put forth the proper effort on defense. The issue is that these guys are all defined already, some of them are fighting for their first ring, Dwight wants a parade, and so on. Only a handful are young players still looking to prove themselves. We have 5 bonafide first ballot Hall of Famers on the team (LeBron, Davis, Dwight, Russ and Carmelo), role players that have championship pedigree and guys who have accumulated the ancillary NBA accolades. It just feels like we lack the right kind of fire and hunger that you want to see in a team that can go all the way.
- The lack of composure. Russ’ late game meltdown (which I felt was unwarranted, with 1.5 seconds to go and being up only 3 that dunk sealed the win for OKC and was not pouring salt in the wound) is just the latest in an early string of surprising losses of composure from what should be a veteran team. Dwight and AD fighting, Russ losing his mind at a game sealing dunk, and the loss of guys like Kidd and Lionel Hollins and…yes…Jared Dudley have all eroded the locker room chemistry that even through the litany of injuries and myopic play last season stayed strong. At least to the public. No longer. Like a daytime soap opera the drama is on full display for all to see and it’s getting ugly real quick. This one circles right back to the coach, again. Vogel seems content to let the team police itself, that he seems to feel his job is to set forth the plan and then yell at refs. Would Phil Jackson have allowed the spirit and harmony of the team to get to this point? Certainly not, he would’ve come up with an obscure ceremony that helped put things in perspective and then benched the young guys, of course.
- Wasn’t there a game last night? Yes, and we lost it in stunning fashion to an 0-4 team we were up 26 points to. The issues above have been here from the start and I didn’t even touch on Russell’s quadruple double that he achieved via 10 turnovers or our inability to generate a quality shot over the last couple of minutes in the 4th quarter or our mediocre three point shooting (but with volume!) or inability to defend without fouling (the Thunder shot 29 free throws last night, were the more physically aggressive team and beat our azzes, kudos to them but we should have won this game going away). If we can’t solve these basic, core issues this team will win a decent number of games and be bounced out of the playoffs within two rounds. I don’t care how much center Anthony Davis plays or how many threes we shoot. If the spirit of the team isn’t right, if we can’t defend or come up with something resembling a quality offense, this season is going to be another wasted one for LeBron and the Lakers.
- Well Mr. Grumpus what do YOU think we can do to fix this? Get healthy and that’s not happening soon. By the time we get guys like Ariza, THT and Ellington back we could be in quite the hole in the loaded western conference. Depending on how truly severe LeBron’s ankle injury is (listed as questionable for tonight and nobody saying the kind of things like “if it were the playoffs I’d play”) it might not really matter anymore. Our 2 wins came in the form of Ja Morant missing a free throw and failing to force overtime and against the Spurs…in overtime. The Spurs are another rebuilding team and it’s feeling to me quite lucky that Ja missed that free throw or this could be `1-4, at best. Luckily for Frank we won those games because the last Laker coach to start the season 0-5 lost his job by the 8th game. If that happens this season, with the roster not having any continuity at all, I don’t think much will improve. Firing Vogel won’t fix what ails us at this point, or at least it’s not likely to fix it soon enough. The truth is that this will fix itself if, and only if, Russ, LeBron and AD can figure out a way to dominate as a trio. Other than that we just don’t have what it takes on the roster.
The only good thing is that we’re not 10 games in and it’s possible we’re getting all the bad mojo out of the woodworks early. Dwight and AD seem to have truly squashed whatever beef that they had, LeBron isn’t likely to be out for the whole season as I think they’re just waiting for him to not feel limited with the ankle, and Russ will get better. Time is the Lakers enemy right now. The more time it takes for things to coalesce the harder the road gets. We need to feast on these rebuilding teams and treat them like the pond scum they are. If we can’t fatten up on the early portion of the schedule and build a little cushion for ourselves it just means the tight rope gets longer and higher as the season wears on. Best to get across it early.
The post 5 Things: Lakers collapse against Thunder then lose composure appeared first on Lakerholics.