Lakers rack up losses and seek solutions in chaotic season

LeBron James turned 37 this Thursday (30). For the first time in his prolific career, he comes from six games in a row with more than 30 points and more than 50% in pitches. But his Los Angeles Lakers have won just one of those six games, a long-suffering triumph over the NBA Western Conference bottom line, and they are looking for solutions in a chaotic season.

Almost nothing has gone according to plan by the California team in the North American basketball league. Continuing injuries and multiple infections by the new coronavirus have made it difficult to establish something similar to cohesion, obstacles that have not been overcome even with LeBron’s long-lived brilliance.

In the last quarter (29), the winger –who has also acted as point guard and center– scored 37 points, caught 13 rebounds and distributed 7 assists. He equaled his three-shot hit record with eight long shots in the net. Still, the Lakers squandered a 14-point lead, losing 104-99 to the Memphis Grizzlies.

“I don’t like to talk this m…all the time, but we’re still a new team trying to adjust,” roared point guard Malik Monk, 23, one of many newcomers. The cast has been profoundly revamped from last season, whose only remnants are James, center wing Anthony Davis, 28, and guard wing Talen Horton-Tucker, 21.

To seek out controversial point guard Russell Westbrook, 33, the board scrapped important parts of the rotation, including wing-guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, 28, and wing-guard Kyle Kuzma, 26. In a decision that left fans baffled, no renewed the contract of handyman Alex Caruso, 27, who has now impressed Chicago Bulls fans.

With James, Davis and Westbrook, the payroll was full under the NBA ceiling system. In this situation, the alternative is to distribute minimum wages to veterans interested in fighting for the title. This is how experienced players arrived, such as point guard Rajon Rondo, 35, wingers Carmelo Anthony, 37, and Trevor Ariza, 36, and center Dwight Howard, 36.

At least five of the athletes from the cast have entered the basketball Hall of Fame, which generated great expectations at this gathering of talent. But most are far from the peak, the group is by far the oldest in the league, and from the beginning it was known that the joining of LeBron and Westbrook would not be simple, due to conflicts in the style of play.

Even in a season close to normality, the challenges would be clear, but normality is far from the current championship. The injuries pile up and have taken out James and Davis, the latter currently out for at least a month due to ligamentous hyperextension in his knee.

Point guard Kendrick Nunn, 26, hired precisely to be one of the young people who would infuse the veteran team with energy, hasn’t even managed to make his debut, having been sidelined since the pre-season with knee problems. Ariza, whose work on defense is seen as critical, has undergone ankle surgery and has played a game in total in the competition.

Covid-19, which has affected almost every team, has also been cruel to the California team. Ten players even entered the so-called “health and safety protocols”, staying away from their teammates. Coach Frank Vogel is out for the same reason, and the command is with assistant David Fizdale.

In this chaos situation, 20 different lineups have been used in 36 matches so far. The NBA roster is normally limited to 15 athletes, but 22 have already entered the court for the Lakers, as the league has allowed them to sign ten-day contracts with replacements for those who have been sidelined by injury or coronavirus.

Some of these replacements, faced with so many problems, have become important pieces. Forward Stanley Johnson, 25, has gone from being unemployed to starting and has been playing for about 30 minutes per game. Shipowner Darren Collison, 34, who had been retired since 2019 for religious reasons, decided to come back and break the branch in the bank.

It was, of course, not the scenario imagined at the beginning of the tournament. Pointed as the favorite in the West, the Los Angeles Lakers has so far accumulated 17 wins and 19 losses – enough campaign, until Thursday night (30), for the seventh place in the conference. In today’s strongest East, it would be in tenth place.

The setting is so atypical that Austin Reaves, 23, who was not picked out of 60 freshmen who entered the NBA this year via “draft” (the rookie recruiting system), was called in and became a key player for his vitality and commitment to defense. A rarity in a cast of old stars that has been scoring very poorly.

The season, however, is long. Each team plays 82 matches in the qualifying phase, and Frank Vogel’s hope is to have his top athletes available at some point to give the team a face. Out of the chaos came unexpected solutions, like Johnson and Reaves, and the coach tries to see something positive in what has happened so far.

“Everyone on the outside has pretty high expectations of our team, and they should. But the reality is we don’t really play together,” said Westbrook, fed up with questions about how long it took for adjustments to be made and be possible to meet the aforementioned expectations.

“It’s the same questions after every game. And I’m tired of giving the same answers. We lost, so they say: ‘So, how long will it take?’. We don’t know,” summed up the guard.