The Los Angeles Lakers haven’t been a good team for the majority of the season. While they have some big names such as LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and Anthony Davis on the roster, the team hasn’t been able to come together as a cohesive unit.
NBA analyst Sam Mitchell has recently explained why the Los Angeles Lakers are struggling this season. He claimed that they don’t play like a team that “understands their deficiencies”.
The Lakers continue to fall
L.A. loses another critical one to the Pelicans last night. @SamMitchellNBA explains what is going wrong with the #LakeShow pic.twitter.com/1lZ1O0SjHD
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) April 2, 2022
The thing that’s most disappointing to me is, the Lakers could win games. They don’t play like a veteran team that understands their deficiencies.
Why would you take bad shots and long shots if you understand you’re a poor defensive transition team. Why would you not set your defense and have keep everybody in front, everybody connected and force teams to shoot over the top.
Because you know, you cannot guard 1 on 1. You don’t have any good 1 on 1 defenders. Did you see CJ McCollum go by the Lakers at all times, Brandon Ingram? The best defender the Lakers have…Stanley Johnson. And Stanley Johnson had no chance at keeping any of those guys in front and he’s their best defender.
There is no doubt that the Los Angeles Lakers have struggled on both ends of the floor this year. Their defensive effort has long been criticized, and some of their offensive possessions have made lots of fans very frustrated. It is clear that they have a lot of work to do in order to improve.
The Los Angeles Lakers are a play-in tier team currently, but there has been some optimism from players like Anthony Davis that they’ll finish the year on a high note. Hopefully, that can happen, and it is unfortunate that a team with this much talent may end up missing the play-in tournament and by extension the playoffs.
