Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Josh Hart recently discussed the team’s roster construction from last season.
The Los Angeles Lakers had some high expectations coming into the 2018-19 season. With a budding young core and LeBron James in town, at the very least their playoff drought was expected to be snapped. Unfortunately, things didn’t go according to plan.
The Lakers‘ playoff drought reached six years, the longest stretch without a playoff appearance in franchise history. There are plenty of reasons that success was limited in the season.
Injuries are usually pointed to, but it goes back further than that. The roster construction was poor from the start and was ultimately the team’s undoing.
Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka got too cute during the offseason after landing James. Instead of following the same formula that the Cleveland Cavaliers used, surrounding James with shooters, they added so-called playmakers and defensive-minded players.
Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, JaVale McGee and Michael Beasley were added. It turned out to be a disaster, something Josh Hart, one of the members of the young core, touched on recently.
While making an appearance on The No Chill Podcast, Hart discussed the roster construction and how he felt about it.
"“Our team, how it was built, I understood the concept of it, but the chemistry was just so different because you had so many dudes that are ball dominant. You had ‘Zo, you had Rondo, you had Lance, you had ‘Bron, so it’s like just those four right there, you know ‘Bron is going to have the ball and is going to play 30, 35 minutes. So you have that, but then if you play the other guys you don’t have the spacing around it… It was so weird, because we had playmaking, but there wasn’t enough plays to be made.”"
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Hart’s assessment of the Lakers is pretty spot on. Getting playmakers to help take the offensive load off of James makes sense, in theory. Los Angeles was hoping to make a playoff run and they would need James healthy, rested and ready to go if they were to make some noise. However, that didn’t happen.
The plan wasn’t fully executed. As Hart points out, there wasn’t enough spacing for those playmakers to make plays. Without some floor spacing, the Lakers faced some very congested halfcourt sets. Without consistent 3-point threats, teams could sag off of the Lakers’ offensive players on the perimeter to clog the paint.
In addition to the lack of shooting, James suffered a groin injury, resulting in the most consecutive missed games and total missed games in a single season in his career. That was a devastating blow, as the injuries quickly piled up after that.
The front office attempted to stop the sinking ship at the trade deadline, acquiring two shooters in Mike Muscala and Reggie Bullock. By then it was too late and the Lakers’ season was already lost.