The Los Angeles Lakers have not gotten out to the start that they, or the fans, were expecting in the 2021-22 season. The Lakers have been floating around .500 and are currently 12-11 on the season and seem to be miles behind the Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns for being the best team in the Western Conference.
The advanced metrics tell a terrible story for the Lakers as well. Over 75% of the team’s rotation has a negative Box Plus/Minus, meaning that they are below-average players. The Lakers are currently 22nd in Net Rating and Simple Rating System.
Not numbers that you want to see as a “contender”.
So what is exactly wrong with the Los Angeles Lakers?
Most people would say two words: Russell Westbrook. And while that is absolutely part of the reason why the team is struggling, we cannot pin it all on Westbrook. The trade and Westbrook’s contract have absolutely caused the Lakers to struggle, but Westbrook is not the only reason why the team is struggling.
As far as I am concerned, we can pinpoint three exact reasons why the Los Angeles Lakers are struggling thus far this season. If the team does not solve these problems, they are not going to make it very far in the NBA Playoffs.
In no particular order, let’s dive into the three reasons why the Los Angeles Lakers are struggling.
1. The Los Angeles Lakers defense is a legitimate problem
The Los Angeles Lakers have one of the best and most dynamic defensive players in the entire league in Anthony Davis yet is still struggling immensely on the defensive side of the basketball. That should tell you all you need to know and it is a huge problem.
Outside of Davis the Lakers really don’t have very many positive defenders. Talen Horton-Tucker is the team’s best perimeter defender and while he has a ton of potential, he alone is not enough to carry the perimeter defense. Kent Bazemore was meant to be a defensive piece and he has played himself out of the rotation and Trevor Ariza has not played yet and it is unclear how big of a role he can even have.
LeBron James isn’t going to play his best defense in the regular season and DeAndre Jordan has been a massive liability at center. Russell Westbrook is awful defensively, as are the rest of the Lakers role players.
The Lakers won the 2020 championship because they had insane performances from LeBron and AD and had great defenders around them. They weren’t the best three-point shooting team in the league but they didn’t have to be.
The Lakers went for a different approach this season (because of the Westbrook trade) targeting shooters instead of defenders. This is a team that lost the perimeter defense of Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and replaced it with Wayne Ellington and Malik Monk.
Heck, Kyle Kuzma would probably be the third-best defender on this Lakers team, which is saying something. You can’t win many games when you allow the fourth-most points per game.
2. Anthony Davis
Anthony Davis at his best is one of the 10 best players in the league and is one of a very select few number of players who can impact the game as much as he does both offensively and defensively. This is by no means a indication of Davis’ overall talent.
That being said, while the counting stats seem fine, Davis has not played as well as he needs to thus far this season and is hurting the team in multiple ways. Part of that reason is that he has to play alongside Russell Westbrook, who just does not fit well with him, but there are multiple things to pick apart about Davis’ game.
MORE: Predicting every December game for the Lakers
The biggest frustration with Davis is the fact that he has all the makings of being the best modern-day center in the league yet does not want to play the five. This forces the team to go get guys like Jordan and Dwight Howard, and quite frankly, is not helping the Lakers’ floor spacing whatsoever.
Davis wants to be a stretch four so bad when in reality he should be playing as a five who can operate at all three levels with a true stretch four next to him. Davis is trying to force things as a stretch four and his jump shot is horrendous this season, only hurting the floor spacing more. Davis’s jump shot efficiency is the worst in the entire NBA this season.
While the advanced metrics are positive (3.1 BPM), it is clear that his desired role with the team is hurting the team more than it is helping it. Nothing is more indicative of that than his on/off splits. The Lakers’ net rating is 8.7 points worse when Davis is on the court than when he is off.
3. The Los Angeles Lakers effort
We obviously are not inside the Los Angeles Lakers locker room every game and do not know what is going on behind closed doors. That being said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is a team full of veterans who have been there and done that and might not be taking these November basketball games all that serious.
It is not an uncommon thing for a veteran team to do, especially a veteran team with so much playoff experience. The only veteran that is truly chasing something is Carmelo Anthony and it probably is not a coincidence that he has been the best of the veteran minimum signings.
Russell Westbrook has not won anything either and he is definitely taking every regular-season game seriously, although sometimes not playing very well as a result.
Dwight Howard all but confirmed these suspicions after the Lakers’ win over the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night. After entering halftime with a deficit, Howard recalled Frank Vogel giving a fired up speech about how the team cannot talk about winning a title without putting in the effort.
Dwight Howard said Frank Vogel's main message of halftime was: "'Stop talking about winning a championship, and not giving a correct effort.' And he's right." Said the Lakers showed way more energy in the second half.
— Kyle Goon (@kylegoon) December 1, 2021
What happened? The Lakers went on to thoroughly outplay the Sacramento Kings in the second half, which is what they should be doing anyways.
There were always going to be some learning curves with this new group of players and those learning curves have not been helped by injury. However, we are now a quarter into the season and that feeling out process can no longer be an excuse.
The Los Angeles Lakers need to start acting like a title-contender and playing like one too or they will never truly be one this season.