When building a potential championship-level team, adding veteran presence is a vital task. Veteran players bring experience to the roster, which helps a team in the playoffs. On top of it, they can also mentor the younger players on the team.
So most teams add a few veteran players to their roster, but the Los Angeles Lakers took this to the next level. During the offseason, the Purple and Gold signed several old players such as Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, and Trevor Ariza.
At first look, it felt like this experiment would do wonders for the Lakers as they already had an established superstar duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Moreover, they tried to improve it by adding Russell Westbrook to the mix.
Unfortunately, this ensemble didn’t work for the team. With more than half the season played, the Lakers continue to fall down in the standings. Most recently, they lost to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers completely blew out the Lakers for which Stephen A. Smith gave the Purple and Gold an earful.
Now, NBA analyst Charles Barkley has also joined the backlash. Chuck focused his outburst majorly on the team’s older players as he labeled them “cooked.”
“As a guy who was a great player, when I got old it sucked. So the Lakers got all them old guys. Think about this. All of those old guys, they’re cooked. Well-done. It’s over. Dwight’s cooked. DeAndre Jordan cooked. Carmelo is cooked. I love Carmelo, it’s over. Those guys are cooked.”
https://twitter.com/NBAonTNT/status/1499634352606511106
Although the players that Barkley mentioned can still perform well on the offensive end of the floor, they can’t do the same on the defensive end.
More often than not, the Lakers have failed to contain the opposing team’s players even after establishing a lead at the beginning of the game. Unless they somehow save this season, it’s quite obvious the franchise needs to go back to the drawing board and maybe start building the team from scratch.
