Fubo News breaks down the Los Angeles Lakers’ struggles in 2023-24 since winning the In-Season Tournament this year.
Since the Los Angeles Lakers won the inaugural In-Season Tournament and hung up another banner – it has not been peaches and cream for the team. LeBron James and Los Angeles seemed much more focused, sharp and motivated in those six games.
In the 10 games after celebrating in Las Vegas as the champs Los Angeles has gone just 3-7 with the team not quite looking the same.
Los Angeles has struggled to get back into a rhythm as of late winning only two of five, with the aura around the team nowhere near the 6-0 run it had in the In-Season Tournament or the 14-10 overall record it built before this stretch. What is wrong with Los Angeles?
Over the last 10 games, Los Angeles has fallen off a cliff defensively. They are allowing 120.5 points per game to opponents. In their first 23 games, Los Angeles allowed just 112.0 points per game.
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Head coach Darvin Ham has tried to fix the defense by moving Jarred Vanderbilt to the starting lineup, which has not fixed the problems on that end of the floor.
When Los Angeles won the championship in 2021 with the duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis it was built on size, length and physicality for its defense. This season they are trying to chase success the same way, but with a roster that is not built the same.
Six of the team’s eight positive lineups this season feature one common thread – Austin Reaves. In games where Los Angeles gets over 116 points, it is 11-2 in 13 games.
Los Angeles is having an identity crisis 34 games into the season masquerading as a tough, defensive team when it is at its best with James, Davis and Reaves making plays surrounded by three-and-D players like Tauren Prince, Rui Hachimura and to a lesser extent Cam Reddish and Max Christie.
So far this season Los Angeles has tried two experiments to try and get the team on track. The first experiment worked. Having Reaves lead the bench unit and close out games with James and Davis led to the team winning the In-Season Tournament.
Reaves is playing great off the bench getting into a much better rhythm in 25 games averaging 15.4 points, 5.3 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game on 50-38-89 splits compared to 14.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game on 42-30-82 splits in nine games as a starter.
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With Reaves coming off the bench he gives that unit a primary playmaker with James on the bench. He also finds himself in the closing lineups more often than not as the teams third best player.
The second experiment has failed. Vanderbilt starting alongside four other forwards and voiding the team of any spacing has failed. If the defense was elite, then Ham can justify this starting group. It hasn’t. Los Angeles is 2-3 with Vanderbilt in the starting lineup giving the vague appearance this is working.
In those five games, Vanderbilt finished with plus/minus’ of plus-nine, negative-11, plus-21, negative-two and negative-20 and a total net rating of negative-three.
Eventually, there will have to be a third experiment for Ham and Los Angeles. If not, there will be a lot of tough conversations in Los Angeles this summer. This franchise is always championship or bust. James has been championship or bust since he left the Cleveland Cavaliers in the summer of 2011.
That third experiment will come with this current roster, or after the team makes an inevitable move or multiple moves to shake things up.
Los Angeles cannot continue to tread water and put this amount of miles on both James and Davis to just be a .500 team. They need to figure things out quickly to hang a much more important banner in the rafters this summer.
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Another factor that isn’t being talked about enough is the calendar. On December 13th Los Angeles was 15-10, In-Season Tournament champions and winners of four of its last five games. Then, starting on Dec. 15 the team started a four-game losing streak and lost five of its next seven games.
Coincidence? Possibly.
The other factor here is that on Dec. 15 the majority of the roster that is often talked about casually as trade fodder became eligible to become real trade candidates.
It is no longer just a hypothetical. Making trades is not just bored fans on the internet goofing around with the trade machine with infinite possibilities for the players they deem not capable of helping Los Angeles win a championship.
From the moment that Russell, Rui Hachimura and Vanderbilt re-signed with Los Angeles and Gabe Vincent joined the team, they have been the shapes that could potentially bring another “star” to the roster.
Vincent has only played five games and is not going to be back on the court for at least 6-8 weeks after surgery.
Vanderbilt supplanted Russell in the starting lineup for the last three games to shake things up. In his last six games since December 15th Russell is down to 10.3 points and 5.0 assists per game on 40.6% shooting while Vanderbilt in five starts has not made a significant shift in the team’s defense. Los Angeles has allowed 170 points in the first quarter during this stretch.
Whether it is a big name like Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan or Dejounte Murray or a smaller move around the edges to help the roster – where there is smoke there is fire.
These players are mega-millionaires for the most part, but they are also human beings with lives around basketball, families, hopes, dreams and feelings. It is not surprising at all that around the time of them potentially having their job security and setting changing that there has been a lull in Los Angeles.
It is up to Ham, James and the front office to reinvigorate Los Angeles and get the team back on a championship trajectory.
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