The Lakers won’t make the playoffs, that much is clear by now. There are a lot of questions to be answered in Los Angeles.
“We fought until the end, but we failed. I’m extremely sorry for our fanbase. I’m also sorry for the Buss family, who gave us every opportunity. We wanted to bring success to the club – and we failed to do that,” said a dejected Frank Vogel, who had still led the Lakers to the title in 2020.
And Carmelo Anthony, one of the veteran stars on the team, added after the loss to the Phoenix Suns that meant missing the play-offs: “Some things we could control, some things we couldn’t. There are no excuses, we just didn’t get it done. “
As is often the case, the reasons for the failure are complex. But one of the main reasons is certainly the Lakers’ injury woes. LeBron James and Anthony Davis kept dropping out. The former played 56 games, the latter only 40. “We’ve had more starting line-ups than wins this season,” said Davis, who was absent for a long time due to a foot injury and was on the floor together with James and Westbrook only 21 times: “It’s going to be difficult to win a championship when your three best guys play together so rarely.”
And then “AD” again made it impressively clear with one sentence how miles away the proud L.A. team missed the season’s goal: “Our goal was to win the championship. “
The Lakers are facing a shake-up
Of course, a team with LeBron James always has to be on your mind in terms of titles, even more so when he has a player like Anthony Davis by his side. The third star was supposed to be Russell Westbrook. But his trade was perhaps also the beginning of the end. Because with the signing of “Russ”, L.A. sent Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Montrezl Harrell to Washington. Those were all three good to very good role players. Westbrook was a shadow of his former self this season, never really arriving in Los Angeles and even becoming a partial target of the fans, who were of course justifiably disappointed with so many poor games. A trade would not come as a surprise. But is there a taker? After all, Westbrook doesn’t earn very little either.
LeBron is still playing at a top level
So the building of a new “Big Three” failed miserably. Questions now need to be answered. For example: Is Coach Vogel still the right man? Is the personnel policy the right one? What kind of team does a LeBron James, who is entering the last year of his contract, need? Fact is: The “King” has shown that he can play outstanding basketball even at the age of 37. With an average of almost 30 points, he is currently the second best scorer in the entire NBA and is also chasing the all-time record of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But he also needs a team around him with which he can be successful. And that was definitely not the case this year.
