Lakers Can’t Sugarcoat Latest Blowout Loss

The Lakers have no room for excuses after how they performed in the loss to the Thunder

The Oklahoma City Thunder are a much better team than the Los Angeles Lakers, but that doesn’t explain the latter’s terrible performance Saturday afternoon—one in which the entire franchise should be thoroughly embarrassed. Just when it appears that this year’s squad can’t play any worse, it does just that. If Kevin Durant was at all curious to see if this is a team he might want to play for next year, no doubt he got a clear and convincing answer in the negative.

With apologies to Kobe Bryant fans, there is only one important goal this season: for the players who will be counted on to lead the team in the post-Bryant era to gain experience and show improvement. A third of the 2015-16 season is over and, for a variety of reasons, the franchise from top to bottom has failed this mission.

Part of the problem is that the roster is seriously flawed, which is the fault of the front office. The team has no scoring power and thus has struggled all year to make baskets. Aside from Bryant, whose diminished skills have been well documented, the only other scorers on the roster are Lou Williams and Nick Young, which speaks for itself. Both are 30-year-old career reserves for a good reason: they are streaky shooters—not good shooters—and neither has any other facet to his game.

The Lakers get no scoring from the center position, either. Neither Roy Hibbert nor Robert Sacre is capable of providing any offense. Against Oklahoma City, they were thoroughly outplayed by Steven Adams and Enes Kanter, who no one would consider to be elite centers, but they scored at will against their weak Laker counterparts.

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Hibbert and Sacre neither rebound well or defend the rim either, despite their size. The quicker guards are able to easily maneuver around them and versatile big men are able to move outside without resistance and hit the mid-range jumper.

In addition, none of the young players have shown any consistent ability to score. The player who comes closest is Jordan Clarkson, but he doesn’t compete with the same confidence and assertiveness he showed last year or resemble the guy who earned first team All-Rookie honors. He may be frustrated alternating between the point guard and shooting guard positions while interacting with different players in the changing rotations. The Lakers need Clarkson to score close to 20 points a game, but it hasn’t happened.

It may be time to ask again whether the front office made a mistake selecting D’Angelo Russell over Jahlil Okafor (or Kristaps Porzingis). Russell and Clarkson have not yet shown they can complement one another. Meanwhile, Okafor, who just turned 20 years old this past week, is averaging 18 points and 8 rebounds per game while drawing double teams that open shooting lanes for other players.

Russell may one day prove to be a good NBA player, but the point is he and Clarkson are both 6-5 combo guards who seem duplicative, which the front office should have foreseen. One could certainly argue that a future with Okafor and Clarkson would be brighter than one with Clarkson and Russell, if those were the two choices.

The biggest reason for the team’s atrocious play is poor coaching. On offense, they play a very slow, deliberate style, which is not only boring, but it doesn’t work. On defense, no matter what Byron Scott is preaching, there is little or no improvement. Through the years, Scott’s teams have always underperformed on that end of the court, so maybe it is time to concede that he just doesn’t know how to coach defense.

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Benching Randle and Russell has proven to be terrible mistake. The team has continued to lose either way, so keeping your two future franchise players on the bench hurts their confidence and deprives them of experience, making the decision nothing short of mystifying.

Typical of Scott’s decision-making was his startling choice of Anthony Brown to replace the injured Bryant at small forward against OKC. After a solid preseason in which he started the last five games, Brown was inexplicably left out of the mix entirely the moment the regular season began. Suddenly, after riding the bench for the first third of the season, he’s told he would be starting and defending Durant. Talk about setting someone up to fail.

With Scott, it is unclear if Brown will ever play again. Or perhaps he’ll take Nance’s place and Nance won’t play. With the team’s horrible front line, Tarik Black should be playing, but is nowhere in sight and no one knows why. Wesley Johnson summed it up best last summer while commenting on his one year playing for Scott, saying, “Nobody really knew what was going on . . . so it was hard for anyone to come in and get into a good rhythm or flow.”

Under Scott, the players are going through the motions without any enthusiasm and it is becoming increasingly clear that they don’t believe in the style of basketball they are playing. When professionals take the court night after night with so little energy or passion, something is very wrong. The younger players are not improving and some have regressed. Scott is relying on Bryant to keep the team together, not realizing that what the players really need right now is to learn how to play without him.

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It appears the Lakers have waived the white flag and will be content to let this season run its course as quickly as possible so they can finally start planning for the future. The rebuilding process, which should have started two years ago but was impossible after Bryant’s contract extension, will begin next summer from the very ground floor. Only time will tell how many years it will take to overcome the damage the last two years have caused the franchise.