5 Things: The dual nature of this Laker team

It’s no mistake that I didn’t do a 5er after the win over Boston. I was excited, I was pumped, I was stoked because for a few moments I thought “we’re turning a corner here!”. Then I remembered how the only consistency thus far for the Lakers has been inconsistency. So I waited a game to see if we would play the way we did against Boston or continue our Paula Abdul “Opposite’s Attract” theme by taking a step forward followed by a step back.

Cue the Cat:

1. LeBron’s declining impact. I’m not wondering anymore, it’s here. The decline has begun and you see it in the pace we play (something that can be traced back to the post-groin injury in year 1), his shot selection (weighted more and more towards the 3 point line, and in how he finishes or rather how he doesn’t. It’s early-ish but The King is on pace to shoot, by far, the most threes/game of his career. 40.6% of his shots are from beyond the arc but 54..9 % of his points are of the 2 point variety. In short, the King is settling for threes. Often after dribbling out the shot clock. No offense to one of the greatest to ever play but is the definition of bad basketball. If it holds up over the course of the season his 8 3PT FGA/game would represent a career high (one which he set 2 season’s ago at 6.3 and replicated, exactly, last season) but he’s only making 2.6/game for a mediocre 33%. It’s showing a lot in his rebounding which is currently 5.9/game (rookie season is his career low at 5.5 other than then and now no season where he averaged fewer than 6+). He’s also picking up more fouls than he generally does. Some of this are his minutes at center, I would imagine. That being the primary defender in the paint, having to rotate out onto guys on defense rather than hiding on a dude in the corner is sapping him of valuable energy. Look, the man is 36 years old, this was always going to happen, and the Lakers are simply ill-equipped to absorb an ever-aging LeBron on this roster. We have almost no up-and-coming talent; no offense to THT but we’re basically hoping he tops out at KCP level impact if one is being realistic. Russ has been doing his best for the most part, but there is simply no replacing what LeBron brings. Could some of this be alleviated by pulling him out of the center rotation? I’m not so sure. Age has a way of just affecting everything. It may be that he’s working his way into game-level conditioning which, if so, means there are better days to come. I sure hope it’s the last point otherwise the rest of the points below don’t really matter.
2. Anthony Davis has to figure out how to be dominant every game. Watch tape of Shaq, dude. Nobody got beat up more in the post but still brought it hard every single night like Shaquille O’Neal. It’s not like AD has been playing poorly, he’s been fine. But with roughly a 1/3 of the Lakers cap space occupied by his salary and given LeBron’s decline we need him to be more than he’s been on a nightly basis. We need more than fine. We need 30 points a game and 10 rebounds and that’s all there is to it. Be a champ on D, sure, hold guys accountable and thank you for doing so, but we need you to be the difference-maker on offense we all know you can be. AD is, again, not really in the MVP conversation. If he can average 30 and 10 he will be and he needs to get on that ASAP or, frankly, the season is done. Russ and LeBron with the rest of this team is not enough to win a title with AD playing a side-kick role. Time to put on the super suit and take to the air, Mr. Davis, the hopes and dreams of Laker Nation are counting on it.
3. We need one dominant quarter from Russ/game. There should never be a game where THT takes more shots than Russell Westbrook does. Russ had scored all of his 9 points in the first half and was largely shut down after that by…himself. 4 shots in the second half. I didn’t see the Grizz scheming for him to not get the ball or aggressively doubling him when he drove. He just kind of took himself out of the game. Again, as a player that roughly 1/3 of the Laker salary cap is dedicated to that simply doesn’t cut it. We absolutely need Russ to p0ut the kind of pressure on the defense that he is still capable of doing. That means more than 9 FGA. That means capping the turnovers at 3/game (he had 6 last night and half of those were just him losing the ball all on his own). Russ is the wild card superstar as he can turn a competitive game into a blowout but can’t seem to be the one that helps the team win on a consistent basis.
4. The rest of the team. I mean…we’re old, man. Outside of Monk and THT (and Nunn who has yet to play and Reaves who is a rookie) there’s not an impact player on the roster under 30. So, with that in mind, it’s small surprise we have trouble staying in front of guys and defending at a level we’d become accustomed to as Laker fans. They all score in ways relative to their roles and they’re doing fine at it with nobody really distinguishing themselves from the rest in terms of consistency or impact. if anything the only thing that’s certain is Monk is our best young player to date passing THT fairly easily. THT still seems to be the apple of the organization’s eye but one has to wonder how long that will continue. Asking more of the role guys is pretty absurd, as well. They don’t bring the ball up, they’re taking up a 1/3 of our cap space each and they weren’t brought here to do that. They take the shots they get, they play defense the best they can in our system. They collect that vet minimum paycheck. Also, hoping Ariza and/or Nunn will drastically change any of this point is fool hardy. Ariza is one of 3 36 year olds on the roster and Nunn hasn’t played in months. Both of them will need practice, game reps and time to get to even so, hopefully they’re contributing come the ASB…depending on if they’re even playing by then.
5. Frank needs to…oh wait, Frank has already changed everything like three times. You can’t coach around age. It is impossible. We play at the slowest pace, with Russ on the squad. We waste entire possessions watching LeBron James dribble and heave. Frank isn’t going to talk LeBron into turning back the clock to 2011. We’ve seen Frank go from one kind of line up to another, from man defense to switching to whatever it is we try in this game or that. As a coach he certainly has limitations but he is also quite open to trying whatever works. The issue being that, because of the duality of the team he was given, it’s overall age and lack of size this is the best he can do. He can’t coach around shrimpy players or aged vets. The irony being that Frank will also be the one to go first because that’s just how it works in pro sport. Coach gets fired, GM next, then players get shipped.

Look, it’s not all doom and gloom. We’re still 6th in the west with teams like the Clippers, Nuggets, Mavericks and Trailblazers all under-performing, as well. If we can shake off our habit of playing .500 ball we can certainly get up to 4th and have home court advantage in the first round while avoiding the play-in. Our longest winning streak this season is 3. Our longest losing streak is also 3. So if LeBron can turn back the clock just a tiny bit, Russ figures how to dominate one quarter/game and AD plays at a close to MVP level we’ll be OK. Maybe not win a title but certainly be more enjoyable to watch. As it all currently strands there’s no way we get past the Warriors or Suns in the west. It ain’t happening, we simply lack in too many areas that they excel in.