A MID-Season Crisis: The Lakers are Kinda Bad

I initially wrote this to ensure there was some content on this site when it went up, but I also had some genuine concerns (more so than normal) about the Lakers' play as of late. As I'm writing this, the Lakers are fresh off a loss to the Spurs 126-102, which, keeping appropriate context, is their first game back after having their schedule postponed due to the LA fires. Anyone, under those circumstances, would probably underperform for a pretty justifiable reason. So I don't want to give them any grief for that and more want to focus on some troubling patterns that (among the fact they have had no legitimate backup center and a questionable guard situation for 3 years) are likely to curtail any glimmer of hope at playoffs success they still had.

For starters, Dalton Knecht has seemed to struggle as of late shooting after such a hot start to the season. It seems he either shoots 50% on ~4 shots or bricks every single attempt with no in-between. This isn't meant to slander him as he is a rookie and consistency will likely come with time, but in the present, it is still a problem the Lakers have to deal with. There is much to be said about depending on your rookie to save your offense when you're trying to be a legitimate title-contending team that maximizes Lebron's final years and AD's prime, but unfortunately, we are far past the point of any other real option being on the table seeing as the Lakers desperately need Knecht to play well to maintain the depth they have at wing.

Another issue is, as Armand Hammer would put it, "The Flexible Unreliability of Time" as it pertains to LeBron James. It is clear that he is definitely not washed, but he also isn't "drag a bad roster to the playoffs singlehandedly" good anymore. We also have zero idea how long he intends to keep playing for. LeBron has always taken occasional breaks defensively during his Lakers tenure, but now it sometimes feels like he simply isn't capable of making the same showstopping defensive plays, at least not as frequently as before. It isn't realistic to expect him to do these things at the age of 40, but this team also realistically will be a first-round out again if he isn't playing like he did a few years ago. Seeing the Spurs trounce the Lakers really does feel like a "the future is now old man" moment watching the future (Wemby) cruise to a W over the old (LeBron). Side note, shout out Wemby and CP3 for giving JJ Redick's kids some memorabilia items after the game since they lost their collection in the LA fires, pretty cool moment to see. Godspeed.

On a more positive note, even with the shakiness at guard, Austin Reaves is slowly emerging as a possibly somewhat legitimate solution to the Lakers' struggles at point guard. Moving DLo created a hole that Reaves has stepped into pretty nicely. With more ball-handling duties, Reaves has had double-digit assists in 5 out of the last 8 games, a pretty good sign for the future. Reaves has pretty consistently leveled up each year in terms of play, so it's not entirely surprising to see him pop off now, but I certainly didn't think it would be as simple as starting him at point guard mid-season. He hasn't scored as well in the last 5ish games, but give him some grace. He's a bright spot on an otherwise incredibly average team, of course excluding LeBron and AD.

Hopefully, JJ Redick's master plan comes together and the Lakers can maybe possibly probably not make it out of the first round, but even if they don't make it and his plan fails:

At least it's not Darvin Ham.

Thanks for reading, have a good one.