Midseason grades for each player on the Los Angeles Lakers roster
The Los Angeles Lakers have mercifully reached the midway point of the 2015-16 NBA season. Only fools expected this team to be anything close to good this season considering the roster that was constructed with no real cohesion, but even the most pessimistic of pessimists may not have expected that the Lakers would be sitting at a meager 9-32 through the first 41 games of the season and at the very bottom of the Western Conference.
As a whole, the Lakers have unquestionably had a rough go of it at this midseason mark. That’s for a variety of reasons ranging from Byron Scott’s general ineffectiveness as a head coach, the lack of development of young players (thanks to Byron, largely), injuries, and the focus being geared toward the impending retirement of Kobe Bryant.
The announcement of Kobe’s retirement has really thrown a monkey wrench into everything that the Lakers were allegedly trying to do this season. While the primary focus was supposed to be on the development on young players, a joint effort of the Kobe Bryant farewell tour and Scott’s short-sightedness has shifted that focus to where the rebuilding effort seems to be in a quagmire with nothing to tow them out this season.
It’s frustrating to see all of this, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no hope and that some player haven’ performed well despite all of the tumultuous happenings in Los Angeles this season. Subsequently, midseason feels like the perfect time to go down the roster and assess what each player has done to this point by giving them a grade.
In alphabetical order, these are grades for each Lakers player for the first half of the season.
Next: Brandon Bass