Are The Los Angeles Lakers The Worst Team In The Western Conference?
By Sam Richmond
Entering the 2014-15 NBA season, few predicted that the Los Angeles Lakers would be a playoff team.
However, through five games, the Lakers haven’t just been performing like a non-playoff team; they’ve been the worst team in the Western Conference.
Los Angeles, the lone winless West team, has the worst point-differential in the league. On average, the Lakers are losing by a whopping 14.8 points per game.
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This isn’t a team that’s simply losing. The Lakers are getting dominated on a nightly basis.
Unfortunately for Kobe Bryant and Co., there’s not much reason to believe this team can turn it around and have a respectable season.
The biggest issue for the Lakers is their work on the defensive end. Los Angeles has allowed a league-worst 116.8 points per game to this point of the season.
While the Lakers will obviously improve on such an unspeakably bad rate as the season progresses, this is still a team that will finish as one of the league’s worst defenses.
The Lakers ranked 28th in points allowed per possession this past season and did little to improve their defensive talent in the summer.
Instead, the Lakers signed the likes of Carlos Boozer, who is such a bad defender that Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau used to bench him late in games, and Jeremy Lin, another offense-first player.
In fact, the only capable defender Los Angeles signed this past season, Ed Davis, is playing behind Boozer at the moment.
It’s all bad for the Lakers on the defensive end. Just about every rotation player on the team is a minus-defender.
Plus, considering what we’ve seen from the Lakers thus far and how the Cleveland Cavaliers performed defensively with him at the helm from 2010-2013, Lakers coach Byron Scott isn’t the defensive guru that’s capable of getting this team to defend.
Life isn’t much better on the offensive end for the Lakers, either.
Los Angeles’ offensive strategy has been more focused on getting Kobe the ball and letting him hoist up low-percentage shots while everyone else stands around than spacing the floor, moving the ball and finding a high-percentage shot.
Bryant took an incredible 37 shots in the Lakers’ Tuesday loss to the Phoenix Suns. Perhaps such a get-Kobe-the-ball offense was worth running in 2006 when he was in his prime, but at 36, Bryant is no longer an efficient player.
Bryant has taken 122 shots this season and has made just 49, giving him 73 misses which is a pretty incredible total when compared to the shot attempts of his other teammates, as pointed out by ESPN’s Tom Haberstoh.
@bomani_jones Kobe has missed 20 more shots than any of his teammates have *taken*.
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) November 5, 2014
This team has simply been a mess on both sides of the ball.
Now, one could make the argument that the Lakers have been unlucky in that their five games this season have been against the Houston Rockets, Phoenix Suns (twice), Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors, all of which are very good teams.
But this goes beyond the Lakers just playing good teams. Los Angeles is extremely thin on talent and its “systems” on both sides of the ball are seriously flawed.
The Lakers are currently in the cellar of the West’s standings at the moment and are poised to remain there until season’s end.