The Los Angeles Lakers dropped to 36-31 on this 2023-24 season following a 120-107 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night. While discussing how concerning this loss was on First Take, Brian Windhorst pointed to how bad the Lakers have been on the defensive end recently.
“Over the last 15 games, the Lakers are 29th in the league in defense,” Windhorst said. “… The only team worse over the last 15 games in the league is the Utah Jazz, who are doing a grade-A tank job to keep their draft pick… That’s the only team that’s playing worse defense than the Lakers.”
Windhorst stated he can’t take a team seriously when the defense is this bad.
“Last year in March they had the number three defense in the league,” Windhorst continued. “I can’t take this team seriously, I respect their ability to win an individual one-off game because of their talent. I can’t take this team seriously to do anything when you’ve got the second-worst defense in the league in the most important part of the season.”
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The Lakers allowed the Kings to shoot 52.3% from the field and 46.3% from beyond the arc in that contest. They just had no answers defensively for what Sacramento was throwing at them and it’s basically been the story for a while now for LA.
On Windhorst’s point, over the last 15 games, the Lakers have a defensive rating of 118.2, which is atrocious. A team that bad defensively can maybe win one playoff series, but that is it.
Defense wins championships and the Lakers’ excellence on that end of the floor was the reason for their remarkable turnaround in the 2022-23 campaign. They had a defensive rating of 111.3 after the All-Star break last season, which ranked fourth in the league.
The Lakers are not playing defense at anywhere near that level at this point, which is very concerning. The absence of Jarred Vanderbilt, who has missed the last 17 games with a right mid-foot sprain, has certainly hurt them on defense, but you wouldn’t expect it to be this bad.
A big reason why the Lakers still have a 9-6 record in these 15 games is that they have shot 41.3% from beyond the arc in that span, which ranks second in the NBA. Their early-season shooting struggles are something the Lakers seem to have addressed, but they have a bigger problem on their hands now.
It is still unclear when Vanderbilt will be back, so LA needs to find a way to get better on that end of the floor without him. They face the Golden State Warriors next on Saturday night and Stephen Curry might be back for that game, which spells trouble for the Lakers.
Kendrick Perkins Says The Lakers Are A Dysfunctional Organization
Windorst is far from the only talking head on ESPN, who is down on LA’s prospects. Kendrick Perkins took a shot at the Lakers by calling them dysfunctional and he believes they have no chance of getting to the NBA Finals.
“When I look at the Lakers, I see a dysfunctional organization right now,” said Perkins. “We don’t know if Darvin Ham is gon’ play D-Lo (D’Angelo Russell) in the fourth quarter. We don’t know what type of minutes he’s gonna get. He may go to IG and post something about Dloading and all things to that nature.”
There does appear to be a bit of dysfunction, but at the end of the day, they just need to put that to the side and play better on the court. It is on LeBron James and Anthony Davis to get the team back on track, with the postseason just over a month away.
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