On the latest episode of "The Bill Simmons Podcast," the host predicted that the Los Angeles Lakers will make it to the play-in tournament, where their season will end. His reasoning? "I don't think they're going to be able to guard anybody."
Joe House, a guest on the podcast, added, "The Lakers aren't good enough. They don't have enough talent."
These aren't merely overreactions to Los Angeles' first game of the season, a 119-109 loss against Golden State. It's deeper than that. Simmons acknowledged that the Lakers were without LeBron James, and will be for a few weeks, but that his shaky regular-season availability in his 23rd NBA season won't save the Lakers.
Having a top-10 defense is synonymous with NBA champions of years past. Los Angeles doesn't have one of those. The Lakers signed Marcus Smart over the summer, hoping he'd return to being somewhat of an elite defender after missing the majority of the past two seasons, but he wasn't that player on Tuesday, picking up four fouls in 13 minutes.
Deandre Ayton, their top free agent signing, was going through the motions on both ends of the floor. His play has been uninspiring, to say the least.
Luka Dončić was the Lakers' best player on both ends of the court, which, no offense to Dončić, isn't what LA should want on defense.
Simmons says Lakers won't make playoffs because they can't guard anyone
Los Angeles is still trying to gel its roster after its players spent little time together on the court during the preseason. It's hard to build any cohesion when you're dealing with various injuries, the most significant missing piece being LeBron. He's somehow still a good defender at 40, but that raises another issue — he's 40. He doesn't have the energy that he once did.
The Lakers are teetering on a balance between looking ahead to the future and trying to push toward a championship with Dončić and LeBron now. Dončić is one of the best scorers in the league, if not the best, and LeBron is LeBron. None of that will matter much, though, if Los Angeles has one of the worst defenses in the league, which is where the team is trending.
Tuesday's loss was just the first of 82 regular-season games, so it's too early to declare that the world is ending. However, as Simmons noted, there are real concerns about how much the Lakers can do defensively to make a deep playoff run (or even make it to the playoffs at all) in a stacked conference.