Lakers

You know the one I’m talking about. The one that all, and I do mean all, sporting teams utilize when they look down on an opponent. The one that allows for little mental mistakes, half-hearted effort, and sleepwalking through quarters (or innings or rounds). The Lakers have been living with that switch a lot this season and, of late, it’s been coming back to bite them.

1. Unforced turnovers. As a team the Lakers are averaging a little over 14 turnovers per game. That’s too many and it’s one of many little things that have added up to some of our tougher losses. James is right around his career average (3.6 for the season, 3.5 for his career), as are all most of the key Lakers. It’s not so much the number but the manner in which they are created. The Lakers are a team with many new faces and even the old ones are being asked to fill different roles on this incarnation. I expect that, when the games matter more, the screws will be tightened a tad.
2. The disappearing, re-appearing KCP. The Lakers rewarded KCP for his troubles with a 2 year, $16.5 million deal this summer. He’s come out this season, like others as a Laker, a little flat. His numbers are right in line for his career. That’s good and I’ve always thought of Kentavious as a slow starter. With such a short turnaround it’s expected the guys who were here last season are going to have some dead leg days. But what I find more of an issue are his almost career low shot attempts thus far. The good thing? He’s making a creer high of them from everywhere. Therefor reason stands that the Lakers need to work to get KCP open more often, get him a couple more shots and keep him engaged.
3. The issues at center. This is not a condemnation of Marc Gasol, frankly the issue might be that we’re not playing Marc enough as he’s averaging a career low in minutes played (19.5) which has resulted in other career low numbers across the board. The bigger issue is Anthony Davis who plays plenty of minutes per game is also averaging career lows in key stats, as well. His scoring, rebounding and blocks are all down. A lot of that might be the same ‘dead legs’ from the turnaround and the season being as early as it is this is certainly an incomplete portrait of what his season will end up looking like. Having said that, as it currently stands AD will not be in the running for any of the major benchmark awards this season. We need AD to be a little more aggressive, poised and focused for us to climb that mountain to bring home another banner.
4. Unlocking the best version of Dennis Schroder. This one’s a conundrum, his numbers are right about where they were last season, his three point shooting is down. Maybe it’s a matter of adjusting to playing off LeBron along with a whole new team, who knows. It just feels like there’s more for him to bring to the table. Just a feeling, I guess.
5. Learning the lesson from a loss. Last season’s squad was pretty damned adept at taking the good from the bad. They won the second game after losses in back-to-backs, were stellar on the road and in the Bubble, and didn’t lose 2 in a row until the seeding games which I hoped were more for tuning up than establishing an identity. This team hasn’t shown me that ability to take the good from the bad, yet. I couldn’t begin to fathom why that is: lack of hunger since we just won, the audacity and difficulty in repeating, the new guys. Whatever the case may be this Laker team lacks some of the fire we saw last year. i hope they find the spark.

The loss to Philly ought to have been a lesson in full game effort and buttoning up the little things. The Pistons game was the inspiration for this post. An unforgivable second half team wide absence of heart or spirit. No movement, no grit, nothing that showed us the team’s identity we grew accustomed to. So let’s hope that game is the wake up call (hopefully the only one) this team needs to work these nitpicky kinks out and reestablish their dominance. Go Lakers.