Lakers newsletter: Whoâs ready to panic?
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MINNEAPOLIS â Hey everyone and welcome back to The Timesâ Lakers Newsletter, where we took Thanksgiving week off and no one noticed! Iâve been on the road with the Lakers in and out of cities like Phoenix, San Antonio, Salt Lake City and, now, Minneapolis with Miami Beach as this sort of beautiful reward. The cost for the sunny destination? One of the worst Lakers games Iâve ever seen.
All things Lakers, all the time.
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As a general rule, I try to use this space as a place to explain things going on around the Lakers with a level of nuance, but hey, when your team scores only 80 points, letâs get frisky.
Sound the alarms and letâs panic
After his teamâs worst offensive game since he joined the Lakers in 2018, LeBron James was asked how heâd assess the season now that the team had played more than a quarter of its games.
âWouldnât say Iâll take it,â he said of the Lakersâ 12-9 record. âIâll never want to say that.â
But James pointed out some indisputable facts. Yes, the team has an entirely new coaching staff. Yes, the team is running new offensive and defensive systems. Yes, players are adjusting to new roles and new players are being integrated.
JJ Redickâs pregame assessment of the first quarter of the Lakersâ season as âuneven and inconsistentâ is, honestly, probably to be expected.
So why do things feel so awful?
Well, part of that is recency bias. After scoring only 80 points in a lopsided loss at Minnesota â on a night when Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards scored only eight points â James called the offense ânasty.â Anthony Davis said it was âdisgusting.â
And on the whole, the offense has been the thing thatâs mostly worked for this team through 21 games.
The energy inside the Lakersâ locker room at the moment isnât particularly good, and that too can be expected after losing five of seven games.
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But letâs not ignore some obvious warning signs indicating that the Lakers could find themselves in some real trouble.
Sign No. 1: James
After the Lakers beat Utah on Sunday night in an ugly game while missing close to half of their regular rotation, James spoke about their deliberate style late in the game, when they put the ball in his hands and let him hunt a mismatch with Utah second-year guard Keyonte George.
James had shot five for 14 from the field in the fourth quarter, hardly the kind of efficiency Redick has preached, but with Austin Reaves, DâAngelo Russell and others unavailable, it was a necessary evil.
And James kind of liked it.
After the game, he said that style of play felt more ânormalâ to him than the pace, space and movement offense the Lakers want to run. James referenced a career-low usage rate (itâs actually his second lowest behind his rookie season) as one of the biggest reasons heâs needed to adjust.
If the Lakers are asking James to do less with the ball in his hands, it should have positive effects in other areas â fewer turnovers, better offensive efficiency, etc. Lately, it hasnât.
James is down to 34.5% from three-point range after four straight games without a make from long range. The slump, in fact, started sooner than that â coinciding with the Lakersâ NBA Cup schedule. Since Nov. 15, James is shooting 21.8% from three. Maybe even more troubling, heâs averaging a career-high 4.2 turnovers per game.
James has said he wants to play all 82 games, but even Redick acknowledged that might not be in the best interest for him or the team after he lumbered his way through Mondayâs loss.
Itâs fair to wonder if Jamesâ legs will allow him to play in the Lakersâ motion-based offense while still allowing him to be fully engaged on the defensive end. James will pass Kareem-Abdul Jabbar for the most minutes played in NBA history sometime this month; heâs 115 behind the Lakers legend.
And if the Lakers want to play a style that one of their best players doesnât want to play â or canât â well, thatâs an issue.
Sign No. 2: The defense
Do you know whatâs a bad sign for the Lakers? That the team has placed an increased emphasis on its awful defense over the last two weeks only to watch its offense crater.
The likelihood that the Lakers can be a good defensive team without it being something the coaches have to emphasize every night is not great. The team just doesnât have the kind of necessary defensive firepower to naturally smother opponents the way, say, Orlando or Oklahoma City or (the sure-to-be Lakers kryptonite) Houston can.
After the loss to Minnesota, Dalton Knecht was asked about the offensive woes and wisely pointed to the team needing to get stops and get in transition. But hereâs the thing: The Lakers have been getting stops over the last week, and they still canât put the ball in the basket.
There have been encouraging signs â maybe the biggest being Rui Hachimura competing in a variety of matchups, including on Edwards, and consistent, confident defensive performances from Max Christie â but the issues are the issues.
The Lakers are small in the backcourt. Theyâre bad in transition, in part, because Davis and James often are way behind plays after they attack the basket. And they lack real physical punch â a problem so severe the Lakers have given French bulldozer Armel Traore a look in their last two games.
Sign No. 3: Their toughness
If thereâs a common denominator in the teams that have given the Lakers the most trouble, itâs having physical perimeter defenders and big men not afraid to deliver some punishment around the rim.
Teams can overcome these deficiencies â they usually do it with shooting. But when theyâre at their best, the Lakers tend to bully smaller, less-physical teams.
So if the Lakers arenât physical enough to fight with the strongest and toughest, and thatâs their biggest strength, well, that would limit the teamâs ceiling.
Again, there have been gains in this area with the Lakers making it a priority, but itâs come at some cost on the offensive end. Most people who know the Lakers know theyâre not the physically toughest. And, if we look at whatâs happened in the last week or so, their mental toughness can be questioned.
They coughed up the game to Orlando because of missed free throws â certainly a mental lapse. They collapsed in the second half when things got tough against Denver, a sign that the Nuggets have a significant mental edge. They got blown out in Phoenix, failed to execute late against Oklahoma City and couldnât stop from being overcome with frustration against Minnesota.
After the Lakers âstopped playingâ in the second half against Denver, Redick wrote it off as an isolated moment. In a giant red flag Monday, Redick said maybe he was wrong.
âI said that that was an aberration. I said that to the group. I said that to you guys,â he told the media after losing to Minnesota. âItâs looking more and more like itâs not an aberration.â
Sign No. 4: No way out
So what is there to do?
Bad news for Lakers fans hungry for the team to act fast â the issues that always have existed for the Lakers and the trade market still exist for them on the trade market.
Prices this early in the season are high for any player who would make an obvious difference, and the Lakers donât have the players or the draft picks to make an overpay. That was true last year; itâs true today.
The teamâs needs â size, two-way players, shooting â also could be described as âa whole bunch of stuff,â which presents its own problems when it comes to cost-benefit analysis of putting assets into play.
If thereâs hope, it comes from the fact that while everything written above is true, the Lakers still are above .500, still capable of beating almost anyone and still a team getting comfortable with new offensive and defensive identities.
Thereâs probably no easy fix, which would be real reason to panic if the Lakers were more than halfway through the season. But itâs still relatively early and maybe the answers can come from within â at least one or two of them.
Song of the Week
âMahashmashanaâ by Father John Misty
Do you know whatâs awesome? Side One, Track One songs like this off the new Father John Misty album, just an absolute epic of orchestral beauty. It takes real guts to ask a listener to spend nine minutes (!!!!!) on the first song of an album, but man is this a tone-setter. I love, love, love this record even if I understand the meaning of only like one out of every 10 lyrics. âThe perfect lie can live forever; the truth donât fare as wellâ is one I get and man, itâs a good one.
In case you missed it
Lakers lose to Minnesota in lowest-scoring game of the LeBron era in L.A.
LeBron James goes old school to lead Lakers past the Jazz
Lakersâ chance to advance in NBA Cup slim after bruising loss to the Thunder
Lakersâ lineup changes pay off with a convincing win over the Spurs
Another lackluster effort as Lakers lose to the Suns
Lakers look to ramp up defense with return to physical play
New season, same result: Lakers lose to Nuggets after third-quarter collapse
Lakersâ six-game winning streak ends in late collapse to Orlando Magic
Until next time...
As always, pass along your thoughts to me at daniel.woike@latimes.com, and please consider subscribing if you like our work!
All things Lakers, all the time.
Get all the Lakers news you need in Dan Woike's weekly newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.