There was never a moment where Wednesday's competition between the Los Angeles Lakers And Miami Heat was particularly close.
The Lakers' last lead was 6-3. Miami had its first double-digit lead less than halfway through the first quarter. They led by 17 at halftime and were winning by 41 when the final siren sounded. It was a wire-to-wire decimation, a performance with which the Lakers were deeply dissatisfied.
“I’m embarrassed, we’re embarrassed,” Trainer said JJ Redick said after the 134-93 loss that dropped his team to 12-10. “It's not a game where I thought we had the right fight, the right professionalism. I'm not sure what was lost in translation. There has to be a certain level of personal responsibility on the pitch.”
LeBron James repeated the opinion and said that he “definitely embarrassing“also and that he agreed with everything his coach said.
“There are no plans or Xs and Os that are going to get you through this,” James said. “If you don’t want to come to the competition, then that’s a different issue. We have to find out.”
This lack of competitiveness was particularly brutal on defense. A quick look at social media during the game offered many demoralizing clips.
They didn't even wait until the fourth quarter to seemingly wave the white flag.
Blowout losses are becoming the norm for the Lakers
Wednesday night's performance is the kind of loss a team wants to suffer at most once in a season. The reality for the Lakers is that losses like this are becoming more and more common.
They have lost four games by 25 points or more in the last 12 days: a 127-102 loss to the Nuggetsa 127-100 loss to the Suns and a 109-80 loss to the Timberwolves on the Monday before this game. All followed a similar pattern, with shaky starts that led to the dam breaking in the second half. They lost the four third quarters of those games by a total of 59 points.
You can blame almost anyone for this losing streak if you try hard enough. Redick has been praised for almost everything he has done as coach of the Lakers, but his team ranks 26th in second-half net rating at -9.3, suggesting any adjustments he makes at halftime , just doesn't work. James is there visible declinewho vacillates from game to game between his old, legendary self and a remnant of it.
Anthony Davis He started the season as MVP but averaged just 18 points in his final seven games as he suffers from plantar fasciitis. Role players are hurting across the board. Even at full power It's a flawed group full of overlapping skills and glaring flaws. Almost everyone involved is to some extent to blame here.
Reality: The Lakers just aren't very good
How surprised should we be by a Lakers game, or even just a game like that? The simplest solution for about a quarter of the season is that the Lakers have simply raised expectations a bit too high with their 10-4 start, when the reality is that this is just not a very good team.
You don't have to look far to find evidence of this. Despite being over .500 in two games, they are tied 23. Net score with 7-15 Toronto Raptors at -4.7. Granted, they've played a relatively tough schedule so far, but they've largely come up against bad teams. They are 7-1 against teams under .500, but 5-9 against teams over .500.
The schedule shouldn't get much easier in a crowded Western Conference, and the Lakers had some pretty unstoppable shooting luck from their opponents in their 10-4 start. Their opponents made 34% of their wide-open threes in the first 14 games, among the lowest marks in the league, but they rose back up to 42.6% in the ensuing 2-6 stretch. This section would probably have been a 1-7 disaster Utah Jazz Coach Will Hardy has never called an imprudent timeout Collin Sexton potential game-winning layup on Sunday.
The samples are still small enough that the team doesn't overreact. Maybe the team is better when it's healthier. Perhaps there are adjustments that can require more effort from roleplayers, especially later in games. But the evidence currently suggests that the Lakers are a lottery-caliber team hiding behind a league buffer that is quickly dwindling. There are no easy solutions here other than trading picks – picks the Lakers barely have – for role players who may or may not help.
It all sounds bleak, but for a team centered around a soon-to-be 40-year-old, it was always a possibility.
A younger James and a healthier Davis covered a lot of problems for an otherwise questionable roster, and now that they can't, all of those existing problems are only getting worse with each game.
