After starting the season 7-5, the Los Angeles Lakers have since lost 19 of their last 24 games following Thursday’s demoralizing loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
Visions of playoffs once danced in the heads of Lakers fans, but the team’s extended slump has fans postponing such dreams for the foreseeable future. Exactly what has happened? Some of the major reasons for the Lakers’ slide include:
- Injuries– D’Angelo Russell, Nick Young, Julius Randle, Larry Nance Jr., Tarik Black and Jose Calderon have each missed at least five games. In the season’s first dozen games, team depth was probably the biggest factor in the Lakers’ success. Once the injury bug hit, Coach Luke Walton was forced to make frequent changes to the rotation, which predictably had a negative impact. But injuries are part of professional basketball, and good teams adjust.
- Unfavorable Schedule– The league didn’t do the Lakers any favors by having them play 20 of their 35 games on the road. Inexperienced young teams typically struggle away from home, and the Lakers have been no exception.
- Defense– The Lakers’ team defense has been, in a word, awful. They have surrendered 110 points per game, the fourth-worst in the league. That puts a tremendous burden on the offense every night, and the Lakers haven’t been able to respond favorably. Responsibility ultimately falls on Walton and his staff to teach proper positioning and better weak-side rotational help.
- Youthful Inconsistency– Young players in the NBA are notoriously inconsistent. That’s been a constant theme for the Lakers so far this year, particularly when it comes to shooting, as excellent individual shooting performances have often been followed by poor ones.
What can be expected going forward? The Lakers current .353 winning percentage projects to 28 wins for a full season. That would represent a healthy 11-game improvement over last season, and certainly a step in the right direction, but the team’s strong start had Lakers fans hoping for more.
The silver lining in the drop-off in their performance is that it gives the Lakers a better opportunity to retain their 2017 first-round draft pick, which was traded in the ill-fated Steve Nash acquisition but is top-3 protected. The lower the team finishes in the standings–currently 24th out of 30 teams–the better the chances are that they’ll earn a top three spot in the lottery, which means they’d keep the pick for what is projected to be an extremely strong 2017 draft.
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That has other future implications too. As of now, the team’s number one choice in the 2019 draft will be given to Orlando in the equally critical Dwight Howard trade. But there’s a catch: NBA rules forbid a team from trading first-round picks in consecutive years. If the Lakers keep their 2017 pick, they automatically convey their first round 2018 pick. Then, rather than also losing their 2019 first round choice from the Howard trade, the Lakers would instead give up two second-round picks to the Magic.
Lakers management, along with many fans, might feel that they already have enough young players. Perhaps the focus going forward should be on acquiring a marquee free agent or two rather than continuing to rebuild with yet another young, inexperienced high draft pick.
But the recently-ratified new collective bargaining agreement will impact that focus. The new CBA makes it easier than ever before for teams to keep their own free agents. Simply put, if a star player’s current team wants to re-sign him, they can offer him significantly more money and a longer contract, lessening the chance that he’d choose to move elsewhere.
So the bad news for the Lakers is that it will be more difficult to sign high quality all-star caliber free agent players in their prime, such as Russell Westbrook or Paul George. But the good news is that it will be easier for them to retain the services of their own young hopeful stars to-be, such as Russell, Randle, Nance and rookie Brandon Ingram.
That leads to a different type of question: just how good will any of those players become? Right now, none is playing at an all-star level, but all are only in their first or second NBA season. How much will each continue to improve? Specifically:
- Will Russell learn to cut down his turnovers and stop dribbling into traffic? Will he develop a more consistently reliable outside shot? And will he become an effective defender?
- How dependable will Randle’s mid-range game become? Will he ever be efficient driving to his right? And can he become a decent rim protector?
- Will Nance expand his offensive repertoire to become more of a scoring threat? Will his body allow him to stay on the court?
- Will Ingram live up to his potential and become a big-time scorer as he matures and his body fills out? He is shooting just 35% from the field, one of the lowest percentages among regulars in the league, and has difficulty with both outside shooting and finishing at the rim.
- Has Jordan Clarkson hit the ceiling of his ability? Will he ultimately be good enough to start in the Lakers backcourt? He has been less consistent and less reliable over the last month or so of the season than he was during the first few weeks.
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The answers to those questions won’t be known for at least another year or two. But ultimately they will go a long way towards determining how good a team the Lakers will or will not be in the years ahead.