It’s been a difficult stretch for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. A 3-8 record in their last 11 games has dropped them to the No. 10 seed in the Western Conference and a .500 record over 40% of the way through the 2023-24 regular season.
In the last 11 games, the Lakers have the 21st-ranked offense in the NBA and the 20th-ranked defense. Their -4.6 net rating is 22nd.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Western Conference is starting to take shape. The Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder have showed no signs of slowing down in the top two spots. The reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets loom large at the No. 3 seed while the L.A. Clippers, Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Pelicans are all on win streaks to put them at No. 4-6 in the conference.
But James knows that in order for the Lakers to figure themsleves out, they can’t be focused on what other teams are doing while they struggle and must get healthy, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“I’m not worried about what everybody else has going on. Obviously there’s a lot of great teams in this league, a lot of people fighting and jockeying for position. But I can only worry about us. I guess I got a small sample size of what we can be when we’re whole but I have more of a larger pie of what we look like when we’re not. So that’s the discouraging part right there. But no excuse because everybody goes through injuries and everyone goes through travel and things of that nature, this league is built on that. So we just have to figure it out.”
The Lakers are certainly in no position to worry about what other teams are accomplishing. For one, nothing other teams do matter if the Lakers continue to lose. And with 48 games remaining in the regular season, the Lakers still have significant time to figure out their struggles.
L.A. simply has to play whoever is in front of them and not be concerned if the Thunder, Timberwolves, Nuggets, Clippers or anyone else are winning their games. No one is more aware for this than James having just gone through it with the Lakers last season when they also started very slow.
Darvin Ham: Lakers need to band together
Lakers head coach Darvin Ham stressed the importance of staying a unit during hard times and working together to reach the other side of this slump.
“It’s a tough back-to-back, especially with the schedule with the game being moved up an hour after playing a tough one last night in Minnesota. But it’s no excuses. We’re 17-17, about to head home. I just told the team that we got to band together, stay together, stay competitive. Got a chance to go back to our own house, sleep in our own beds, workout in our own building and try to defend our home floor to over the next 30 days, turn this thing around.”
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