Lakers first trimester report card: How the team fares heading into 2023
By Ed Schrenzel
One-third of the Los Angeles Lakers’ season is in the books. What progress have they made since their horrendous start when they lost 10 of their first 12 games?
For the fourth consecutive season, the Lakers will go only as far as their two stars, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, can carry them. Let’s look at have they been doing so far this season.
Anthony Davis:
Anthony Davis was answering those who criticized his durability by playing 25 of the team’s first 28 games. Unfortunately, a foot injury suffered against the Denver Nuggets will sideline him for at least a month.
Prior to the injury, AD had been a complete beast this season. He had re-established himself as a force to be reckoned with, playing at at top-five level that put him in the discussion for the MVP award.
His statistics tell much of the story. He is averaging career highs in both field goal percentage, 59.3%, and rebounds, 12.4 per game, and has matched his career-best in scoring with 28.1 points per game.
Davis has also played superlative defense even beyond his 2.2 blocked shots per game, which puts him among the league leaders. He has provided a safety net for the Lakers’ shaky perimeter defense.
The sooner the Lakers get Anthony Davis back, the better.
LeBron James:
It was inevitable that Father Time would start to catch up with the other member of the Lakers star duo. And although James often still resembles the LeBron of his prime, the cracks in his game are starting to show, even if the numbers are remarkable for an athlete about to turn age 38.
He’s still averaging 26.5 points per game. But his shooting percentage of 47.5% is his lowest since his second NBA season, and his three-point percentage, 31.5%, is the second-lowest of his career.
LeBron no longer regularly attacks the rim with impudence. In his prime, his unmatched combination of power and speed intimidated opponents. Now, players who were toddlers when James was an NBA star are happy to challenge him on his drives to the hoop.
As a result his two-point field goal percentage, 55.7%, is his second-lowest in the past 11 years. And the refs no longer give him the benefit of the doubt (as they do for Giannis Antetokounmpo) when he bulls his way into the paint.
Possibly the biggest slippage in James’ game is on defense. Coach Darvin Ham hasn’t said so publicly, but it appears that most of LeBron’s minutes are now at power forward because of his difficulty defending small forwards on the perimeter.
But LBJ is still capable of putting up good shooting, 30+ point efforts. Lakers fans just have to hope that he’s able to deliver more of those kinds of games than the 9-22 (1-8 on 3’s) and 8-22 (3-10) clunkers he had in losses to the 76ers and Pacers.
The rest of the Los Angeles Lakers roster:
To nobody’s surprise, the Lakers’ outside shooting has been their Achilles heel. In particular, Patrick Beverley has been a complete bust on offense (25% from deep and 30% overall). Kendrick Nunn (28% and 36%), Dennis Schroder (26% and 40%), Troy Brown (31% and 43%) and Juan Toscano-Anderson (18% and 43%) have been just about as awful.
Russell Westbrook deserves the praise he’s received for his willingness to accept a sixth-man role and for bringing energy off the bench. But his shooting stats (28% and 40%) are actually worse than last season.
As a team, the Lakers rank last in the NBA in three-point shooting. Yet they connect on nearly 56% of their two-point tries, ninth in the league. Their obvious offensive strength is in the paint. And they rank first in free throws made per game.
Overall, the Lakers’ offense hasn’t been the problem thanks to the yeoman efforts of AD, supported not only by LeBron but also by Lonnie Walker and Austin Reaves, and, when he gets playing time, Thomas Bryant. They rank 11th in the NBA in scoring at 115 points per game. The question now is how well will the offense perform without Davis?
It is on the defensive end where the team has struggled, ranking 25th while surrendering over 116 PPG. The reasons for this are at least threefold.
First of all, no player other than Davis, perhaps Reaves, and sometimes Beverley, is an above-average man defender. Also, the team’s lack of size on the perimeter has hurt them defensively, particularly when Ham frequently plays three guards together.
Finally, because of their huge roster turnover this season plus a new coach, the players haven’t had enough court time together to assemble a respectable team defense. And now, minus AD, it’s likely the Lakers’ defense will suffer.
The Western Conference:
A big factor working in the Lakers’ favor is that the Western Conference is so well-balanced. No team has been dominant and 3 of the 4 preseason favorites are not playing up to expectations.
The defending NBA champion Warriors are struggling to reach .500 and have the same amount of losses as the Lakers. Now their star Steph Curry could be sidelined with a shoulder injury for a month or longer.
The Suns, who had the best record in the league last season, just suffered a 5-game losing streak. Their star, Devin Booker is battling a hamstring injury while Chris Paul has missed half the season and hasn’t looked like the old CP3 in the games he has played.
Kawhi Leonard has played in only 10 games for the Clippers and has yet to find his form consistently after missing all of last season. Paul George has been battling injuries and has already missed 10 games. As a result, the team lacks fluidity on both ends of the court and has only 2 more losses than the Lakers.
So despite their oh-so-slow start, the Lakers weren’t left too far behind. They are currently in 12th place but have only 4 more losses than fourth-place Phoenix and are just 2 losses out of 7th place, the top play-in spot. There’s even plenty of time remaining to make up the 3-loss deficit to leap up into 6th, a guaranteed playoff position.
Los Angeles Lakers outlook:
Their recent efforts against three of the league’s top teams, Milwaukee, Boston and Denver, have been highly encouraging. And the team has a favorable upcoming schedule.
Over their next 10 games, they play just 3 times against teams with winning records (Dallas and Sacramento twice), 4 against .500 teams (Atlanta and Miami twice each) and 3 vs teams with losing records (Charlotte and Orlando twice).
With Davis, it looked like the Lakers would have been able to pile up enough wins to move up in the standings even though 8 of the 12 games are on the road. But without AD — who knows? Several players, including Bryant, will have to raise the level of their games.
It seems likely that Rob Pelinka will package 2-3 players (Beverley? Nunn? Schroder?) and possibly a future first to get back at least one solid shooter in return to help shore up the team’s biggest weakness.
Injuries remain perhaps the big threat to the Lakers’ posterity. AD will now have to sit out multiple games. LeBron has had to miss substantial time in the past few years and at his age, the possibility of it happening again looms large. Both Bryant and Beverley have had durability issues.
For the first time since the season began, Lakers fans were rejoicing over the team’s significant progress and were legitimately optimistic that they will close strongly. But Davis’ injury casts a shadow of doubt over how well the team will perform.