It goes without saying that despite being towards the end of his career, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James is still a phenomenal player in the NBA. Ever since his return from an early-season injury, he has put on an absolute show for the fans. Unfortunately, despite LeBron’s insane performances, the Lakers are struggling.
In fact, the Lakers have now lost their last five games and currently sit in the seventh spot in the Western Conference. Astonishingly, in each of the Lakers’ last five losses, James has scored more than 30 points! One might wonder, what else does he need to do?
Well, Lakers assistant coach David Fizdale was asked this question after the team’s Christmas Day defeat at the hands of the Brooklyn Nets. To be precise, he was asked what is the solution for the Lakers to play well when James is not on the court. Fizdale gave a funny reply stating:
“We can clone him. Do you know any good scientists? Can we make a duplicate? I don’t know.”
David Fizdale on what the Lakers should do when LeBron is out of the game: "We can clone him. Do you know any good scientists? Can we make a duplicate? I don't know."
— Ryan Ward (@RyanWardLA) December 26, 2021
While this might be a hilarious reply, it still doesn’t hide the fact that the Lakers are struggling to win games even with LeBron in his red-hot form. It is quite surprising to see them struggle this bad as the purple and gold were expected to be one of the top teams in the NBA before the season began.
Moreover, on paper, they look like a dangerous unit, but when it comes to performing at an elite level, not so much. To put things in a better perspective, over the last 5 games, James has averaged 31.6 PPG, 9.8 RPG, and 5.2 APG. And as we mentioned earlier, the Lakers have lost all five games.
Moving forward, the coaching staff needs to figure out how to get the best out of the team. Otherwise, as NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins suggested, it might be time for the Lakers to trade someone.
Could this be a plausible solution? Well, the team seems to be out of any other options right now. So it might be a tough pill to swallow, but it seems evident that the Lakers’ superteam experiment has failed.
