It’s been far too long since my last installment of Why-I-Love-The-L.A.-Lakers, so I thought I would take some time this week to reflect on some of the lackluster outings they’ve had down this crucial stretch of the NBA season.
While they do have the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference locked down, the Lakers haven’t proven they’re worthy of top honors, let alone a playoff berth in general over the past five games. The Lakers have dropped three of their last five contests, all on the road, and Wednesday night’s loss to Atlanta basically summed up what the past few weeks have looked like for the team. To put it simply, they’re getting beat by teams with half the talent and twice the heart.
L.A. has barely managed a winning record since the All-Star break, going 13-8 with just one double-digit win during that stretch. With recent losses to Oklahoma City and New Orleans, it’s clear that this L.A. team is nowhere near the level it needs to be to make a third straight appearance in the title game. Last season L.A. closed out the year winning seven of its last eight games before stomping over the Utah Jazz in the opening round of the playoffs.
Sitting at 54-21 and four games ahead of second-place Dallas, the Lakers will face third-place Utah tonight, followed by matchups with San Antonio, Denver and Portland during the final two weeks of the season. If L.A. believes it’s going to be able to make another run at the title, and clearly it does, it’ll have to start playing playoff caliber
basketball by, let’s say, yesterday.
Kobe Bryant has shown that he is still the best in the game, averaging 27.2 points and 5.1 assists this season, but he hasn’t been able to get that same spark from his teammates as he was so heavily praised for in 2009. Here are a couple of the biggest holes I see the Lakers needing to address immediately.
First, Kobe can’t and shouldn’t need to score every time down the court. Recently the Lakers have struggled to find other options offensively, especially considering All-Star center Pau Gasol got up just one shot attempt over the span of two quarters against the Hawks. Call him soft, call him what you will, but the Lakers need Gasol to play well in order to be successful. Especially with Andrew Bynum going down with another injury.
Secondly are the ever-apparent and ever-lingering point guard issues.
Derek Fisher is getting old. There are no two ways about it. He doesn’t provide that same three-point threat that he used to and is losing his step on the quicker and younger guards he’ll have to matchup with come playoff time.
Jordan Farmar isn’t going to fill that void, and neither will the once-productive Sasha Vujacic.
This will likely leave a portion of the ball handling up to Kobe, and could cut down his touches in the half court set noticeably. Unless of course everyone’s favorite slam dunk contestant Shannon Brown decides to show up, but that remains to be seen.
Ultimately, and this is obviously no secret, the Lakers seem as though they have already won the title and it’s just a matter of getting through the rest of the season unscathed. As an L.A. fan, this scares me. I fear that L.A. will draw a sleeper team like Portland in the opening round of the playoffs and will still be snoozing from the regular season and may not be able to bounce back in time. Before you know it Portland will have taken two in L.A. and the series could be all but over.
At the end of the day L.A. clearly has the best team in the league top to bottom, but the question still remains: Will they show up come playoff time?
[email protected]