LOS ANGELES, United States – A deeply renewed workforce with failed recruits, a lackluster game symbolized by a fantastic defense, which was the basis of the 2020 title, and recurring injuries explain the Lakers’ fiasco of deprivation. of and required rebuild.
The Westbrook symbol
When Russell Westbrook was hired by Washington, he was to form a complementary and formidable “Big 3” with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the team’s only survivors (along with Avery Bradley and Talen Horton-Tucker), after being eliminated in first round of the 2021 playoffs. Neither the fans nor the orange planet imagined that a huge failure would happen in the end.
Especially since after the championship record for hat-tricks, the big maneuvers continued: veterans Carmelo Anthony, Trevor Ariza, DeAndre Jordan arrived, Rajon Rondo (left almost immediately) and Dwight Howard, architects of the coronation in 2020, . Malik Monk and Kendrick Nunn were expected to bring new blood to the older NBA roster.
Paid for $ 44.2 million a season, Westbrook, despite his undoubted desire to do well, has often done things wrong, to the point of making fun of and even threatening frustrated fans for his many failures, which made him have often appeared in “Shaqtin ‘a Fool”, the blooper invented by the former famous Shaquille O’Neal on the TNT channel.
For Magic Johnson, another Purple and Gold legend, the mistake is LeBron James, who he says persuaded CEO Rob Pelinka to choose “RussWest” instead of DeMar DeRozan, who left San Antonio in Chicago, where he knows best. season of his career. Probably, but it is above all the conventional terms that stumbled, because LA did not want to offer him the three-year contract he was hoping for.
No idea, no defense
Two years ago, Davis’s bet, which arrived from New Orleans, proved to be a winner: the Lakers recruited one of the best defenders in the league, combined with an effective scorer, who had become the ideal lieutenant of James. Behind this duo, the whole team was coordinated and mainly thanks to their prevention, they won their 17th title, equaling the Celtics record.
This season was that of a boulevard at dusk, controlled by all the blinds from opposing attacks that were almost never thwarted to score. And offensively, it was the desert, the team had a huge “dependence on LeBron”. At 37, James has excelled (30.3 points average, 52.4% success rate), but without making others play better, as evidenced by his 6.2 average assists, far away from 10.2 of the financial year 2019-2020.
Last week, coach Frank Vogel made a bitter remark after a season-long failure in Dallas: “We just did not play well, not with enough toughness, ingenuity, concentration and envy. It is unacceptable, we were bad at all levels, the coaches, the players, everyone. We are not good enough, not even in training.
recurrent injuries
The large number of injuries suffered by players from California this season can not be unrelated to the long descent of the team into hell.
Needless to say, it was inevitably more difficult without Anthony Davis, whose fragility is notorious and who eventually played only half the games (40 of 82, three games from the end), suffering from a sprain in his left knee at end of December, then another on the right foot in mid-February.
And that has been impossible in recent weeks, with James not having to rest his recurring left knee at times before a turn in his left ankle causes him to miss several crucial matches.
In fact, for the “Big 3” to work with Westbrook, the trio would have to play more than 21 games together.
And now?
The difficult questions remain. Will the Lakers want to sell Westbrook? Will they succeed, knowing that he will hardly find a buyer for his wonderful contract? Can James, with a contract until 2023, leave? And Davis? Another roster reshuffle is appropriate, but with what strategy and which free star in the market, if Westbrook leaves? Finally, what to do with Vogel? Will he be the first to bear the brunt of the fiasco? The names of Doc Rivers (Sixers) and Quin Snyder (Jazz) are already in circulation in any case.
