There is only so much hope one can have. The days are getting shorter, and the losses keep piling up for the now 2-9 Lakers. Los Angeles is an unusually dark place to be these days.
What was once a noble effort of looking at a roster and seeking for the ways in which it can be improved upon—scheme, rotation, lineup data, trends—becomes a rather fruitless undertaking when a team looks as hopeless as it does now.
Part of what had me so hopeful in October was that this team was clearly half-finished. Russell Westbrook surely would not last long, and changes would be made. In fact, GM Rob Pelinka essentially guaranteed that. And yet, despite this incompleteness, the team still performed well; defensively they were elite and were in all but 1 of their first 5 games, despite some of the ugliest shooting numbers imaginable. Coach Ham clearly had this team’s buy-in. This group of fast, athletic, young players were not deterred by the disadvantages set before them. They were sure to find themselves out of the mud and onto greener pastures soon enough. It was a merrier time back then, three weeks ago.
But now the team is 7 games under .500, something that, as Daman Rangoola shared, didn’t happen until the 63rd game of last season, in March. (It is November, by the way.) And the rumors that the team is hesitant to trade their future assets in order to make those promised changes and improve the team have reached a higher pitch this week. And so, when the basketball product on the court looks as bad as it has, and the idea of change looks less realistic, we are only left to turn our attention to the broader scope of this team and it’s decision makers to determine what is to be done with a team and a season in which they still have 71 games to play. Like a baby that is screaming in public, I really don’t want to, but I kind of can’t help but look.
Actually, let’s start there. (Not with the baby.) The Lakers still have 87% of their season to play. I have seen reporters like Shams and Woj and Windhorst all message the same thing: this season is lost, focus on next year. From that perspective, there is no trade worth making that could realistically put a team this bad into a position good enough to justify moving 2 future first round picks. So it’s time to pack it in, “lick your wounds,” as Windy says, and move on to the 2023 off-season.
Only, the Lakers don’t have their pick this off-season. That is, the Pelicans have the option to swap their own pick with the Lakers if it’s better (or if it’s worse? They have the choice to do either.). And I don’t really project the Pelicans to be a bottom 5 lottery team, like where the Lakers clearly seem to be heading. So this team can’t tank in the classic sense. But in the literal sense, this team is tanking.
So, should a team 11 games into a season of 82 give up? Like, a professional sports team should do that? The team with the actual face of the league should say, “Hey sorry Face of the League, but we are going to waste this season for you. But you get this t-shirt!” I guess there’s the scoring record, but I think if I have to watch LeBron break Kareem’s mythical number in a blowout loss to the Hornets on the road, I might have an aneurysm.
Then what do we have to look forward to next off-season? The Lakers are projected to have around $34 million in practical cap space in 2023, according to Spotrac. That leaves LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Damian Jones, and Max Christie as the only ones left on the books. So the assumption here is that the Lakers could either sign some players, or a player worth around $30 million/year, or they can trade some of the roster available to them alongside those precious draft picks that apparently are too good to deal this year. Or they can do both. They can bring in a role player, or they can bring in a medium-sized star.
Or they can blow it up.
I’m actually not going to talk about that right now, but it is technically something they can do, and it would make more sense to trade Anthony Davis around the same time as they would trade LeBron, something they can’t do this year.
This stuff is pretty daunting. Overwhelming, even. I’m no cap-expert. It’s definitely not something I imagined I would write about this early into a season. And I could be looking at this all wrong! Maybe there is more to their salary situation that is promising, and I’m too much of a summer child to realize. That is honestly very likely. But I do know that in today’s NBA, 34 million is not a ton of money.
And so I again look at what the Lakers can do this year to improve. Off the court. What does Pelinka say he cares about right now? Well, he wants to win. And he wants to protect LeBron’s legacy. He said both of these things in the ramp up to this current season. The Lakers are not winning, and LeBron’s legacy is… well not in question (not at all), but it is beginning to leave a bitter aftertaste.
The Lakers need to win games. Not next year, but this year. And they have 71 more games this season. I cannot stress enough how unserious it would be to throw away that many games because you do not want to trade some draft picks. And I also don’t want to understate the value of those picks. It’s real. The Lakers could be very bad in 5 or 6 years from now. Those picks could lead to the next franchise star. But I also don’t believe Pelinka, who’s contract extension only goes through the 2025-2026 season, expects to see those picks come to fruition if he continues to trot out these types of teams. So they will be traded.
And when we look at the roster, and we see almost player after player, all on veteran minimum contracts, be used in over extensive ways and scaling up, both positionally and within their roles, and we watch them “underperform” night after night, it leaves one to wonder how a person can feel this is a roster worth putting around their two stars. This disjointed, incomplete roster affects everyone and their play visibly suffers because of it. There is much to like about all of the players the Lakers signed this summer, but they are not players who should be playing heavy minutes, or expected to guard a size or two up, or make difficult shots on a consistent basis, or even play a role that uplifts the two best players. They are being paid the least amount of money a player can be paid, and that should indicate their usefulness to a team. If they play above their contract, it’s a steal.
No other star in the league is being surrounded by these types of players and succeeding. They’re just not. It does not make sense to expect something different from the Lakers’ stars, especially when one of them is almost 100 38 years old. So the path for this season should then be to trade the picks. Move off Russ, who you don’t expect to sign for next year at any contract (please, God), and bring in quality role players who make money at the NBA’s middle-class, who make shots and defend well and provide size and just do all the things good role-players do.
I won’t propose any of those trades here. They’re out there, and if you’re reading this (hey, thanks), you undoubtedly already know about them.
Because look, the value of the picks may be high, and the prospect of using them on a team that, let’s say, makes the play-in tournament but misses the playoffs, is an embarrassing one for sure. But being in the business of NBA stars means mortgaging a franchise’s near, but distant, future. LeBron is not an experimental player. We know what he can do, and we know what works around him. The opportunity to take a bad situation and rectify it in a way that makes sense for this season, including the opportunity to build cohesion for next season, exists, and it should be seized upon.
To me, there is infinitely more value in putting together a team a fanbase can be proud of and one that would give LeBron and Anthony Davis basketball support and leads to real competition than there is in telling us, the world, and Mr. Face of the League himself that 70 games of a season do not matter.