Bad times to be a fan Lakers LeBron James promised them very happy gathering this summer in his same squad a constellation of veteran All-Stars led by Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and Rajon Rondo. ‘The King’ hoped that with that group of players hungry to win a ring and with the company of Anthony Davis, the Angelenos will dominate with an iron fist a Western Conference where they are officially making a fool of themselves.
If the Play-In that the NBA inaugurated last year did not exist, the Lakers would no longer have mathematical options to play in the postseason. They still have a few left, but they have to give a series of not easy caroms so that they can fight in that playoff that the competition invented between the seventh and tenth of the Conference to put the two best in Play-Offs. A team in full reconstruction like the San Antonio Spurs has just passed them in the standings, relegating them to eleventh place with a balance of 31 wins and 44 losses.
They have seven games left to play and six of them will be against teams that are already classified in the Western Conference for the Play-Off and with note. To earn a pass that they now do not depend on themselves, they will have to win in the next two weeks on fields as complicated as those of Phoenix, Golden State or Utah. The team has suffered greatly from the absence of an Anthony Davis who is expected to force himself to try to turn around a season to forget.
The Angelenos started out with a lot of offensive muscle, but soon everyone realized that defensively they were one of the worst teams in the competition. Their rivals began to punish them with a fast game and a lot of extra-pass that left their little defensive commitment in the air. of its stars. The spotlights were put on the poor performance of a Westbrook who can no longer even take his relatives to the pavilion due to the harsh criticism of the fans.
But the base is not the only problem of a clearly unbalanced team and where LeBron seems to be caring more about his own statistics and records than getting wins. It is of little use that it is the player’s best scoring season at 37 years old with 30 goals per game if his team accumulates a defensive embarrassment night after night, conceding an average of 112.4 points, being the eighth worst defense in the entire NBA.
The evidence is that the team is failing no matter where you look and that LeBron could add his second season in four years without stepping on the Play-Offs with the legendary franchise. The team’s woes could lead to another crazy summer of transfers, though fewer and fewer players are drawn to playing alongside James. since his effectiveness to reach the NBA finals is decreasing. We’ll see what happens in the remaining seven games, but if they don’t qualify, the foundations of the most successful franchise, along with the Boston Celtics, could shake.