Following last night’s loss against the Spurs, I’ve discovered a few issues that this years Lakers team has. There’s two problems that they have. The first problem is coming up short in comeback attempts.
All three of the Lakers’ losses this year have been in the same exact way. At first, they are trailing by 10-20 points. Then they start to wake up and play defense and they cut to lead to 2 or 3. However, as soon as they are a field goal away from tying the game or even taking a lead, they completely forget how to play basketball. This is extremely frustrating to watch, especially in last night’s game. The Lakers made a nice comeback in the 3rd quarter but when they had opportunities to take the lead, the ball simply couldn’t find the basket. Frank Vogel needs to get the team together in practice and talk about this problem and figure out a solution. They need to learn how to keep the momentum going when they’re on their way to a comeback. Missing consecutive three-pointers and free throws aren’t going to help. That leads me to their second issue.
The Lakers seem to be completely ice-cold from beyond the arc and also the free-throw line. They have had this problem for about a decade now and even LeBron and AD weren’t able to solve this problem. Last night they were 10-30 from downtown and 13-21 from the line compared to the Spurs 16-17. the Lakers need to put extra work in practice focusing on knocking down consecutive threes and free throws in order to improve in those categories. If they continue to shoot the ball they did last night, they will definitely end up losing many more games.
A third additional issue they need to solve is their big man problem. Marc Gasol is the only 7 footer on the team and he is only a shell of his former self. In 14 minutes of gameplay yesterday, Gasol had 4 points, 1 rebound, 3 turnovers, 4 fouls, and a +/- of -16. This simply isn’t going to work unless he plays the way he did against the Timberwolves. The Lakers are definitely regretting trading away McGee and not signing Dwight Howard and DeMarcus Cousins.
I could be completely wrong and the Lakers are simply taking it easy since it hasn’t been three months since the NBA finals. This may also explain the Miami Heat’s early struggles. Hopefully, as the season progresses the Lakers will gradually pick it up and be the same dominant team in the playoffs just like last year.
