Kudos to Lakers for Putting Together A Strong Group of Reserves
By Hannah Kulik
The Los Angeles Lakers may have a bad team, but they have mastered the ability to find a solid reserve unit to come off the bench and spark the team in recent seasons.
During the tumultuous 2012-13 season, when Mike D’Antoni took over shortly after the season started, the Lakers rarely used more than seven or eight players in a game. Although injuries were a factor, the truth is the Lakers had a very poor bench and there was no one to bring in who could contribute much.
On the other hand, when they were healthy, the Lakers had a starting five of Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, and Metta World Peace. On paper it looked like a great starting unit, but injuries and the absence of a solid bench forced Kobe to play too many minutes and we know how that turned out.
By the start of the following season everything had changed. The only starter left who could play was Gasol. Everyone else was hurting or gone.
In the off-season, the front office decided to maintain financial flexibility in the hopes of eventually signing Carmelo Anthony, Lebron James, or both, so they chose young players with something to prove who would sign for a minimum salary.
In the early part of the 2013-14 season, the starting five was Steve Nash, Steve Blake, Shawn Williams, Chris Kaman, and Pau Gasol. The reserves, however, were Jordan Farmar, Jodie Meeks, Xavier Henry, Nick Young, Wesley Johnson, Jordan Hill and Ryan Kelly.
It was the reserves who propelled the team to a stunning victory over the Clippers in the season opener.
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Farmar ran the show smoothly and efficiently from the point guard position. We all know what Meeks and Young contributed last season, and Henry came out of nowhere to defeat the Clippers almost single-handedly in the opener.
The starters weren’t much fun to watch last season, but when the reserves entered the game it was fast-paced, exciting basketball. It is easy to forget that after the first 19 games of the season the Lakers had a winning record.
This season the Lakers are off to an even worse start. The team currently consists of Kobe Bryant and 12 other players, none of whom would start on any other team, or at least not on any other contending team.
On any given night the Lakers have four reserves masquerading as starters, and they cannot compete with the starters on most other teams so they quickly fall behind.
A great example is last night’s loss to the Miami Heat in which the Lakers fell behind 18 to 0 to start and did not score until the reserves began entering the game.
This is not intended as a knock against the starters. It is just that they are really reserves, and in that role they could be valuable even on good teams.
The current bench consists of Jeremy Lin and Wayne Ellington at guard, Nick Young and Carlos Boozer at forward, and Tarik Black at center. Ryan Kelly has returned from injury, and Jordan Clarkson is still promising though he is given little chance to play. Add Jordan Hill, Ed Davis, Ronnie Price, and Wesley Johnson to the mix – all career reserves — and the Lakers have a solid bench.
In fact, most nights nearly every member of the team gets into the game, a far cry from two seasons ago when it was rare for more than seven or eight players to see any action.
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The obvious problem, of course, is that a team cannot win without a strong starting group and the Lakers have no real starters other than Bryant, who is really struggling and has missed several games lately. They do, however, have a strong second unit which is often entertaining and can make up ground on the other team’s reserves after the starters fall behind.
The intriguing question is this: Even without signing a franchise-defining player like Kevin Durant, if the bench is strong, what would happen if the Lakers made just a few tweaks next season, say pairing Kobe and a returning Julius Randle with three solid free agents to form a revamped starting group?
Many names come to mind (Goran Dragic, Gerald Green, Marc Gasol, Greg Monroe, Rajon Rondo, and LaMarcus Aldridge, to name a few), all of whom are free agents or rumored to be on the trading block.
We’ll have to ride out this season and see what develops. In the meantime, I look forward to watching the second unit play. I hope in this darkest of seasons that Clarkson and Black get a meaningful opportunity to prove they deserve to be part of the Lakers’ future. I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they shouldn’t be given a real chance to play.
Next: Kobe Bryant: Why the Lakers SG should be an NBA All-Star.