The Los Angeles Lakers have struggled to generate any rhythm or consistency so far this season. They are 24-25 through 49 games, leaving them tied for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference with the Utah Jazz. This is despite the fact that Anthony Davis and LeBron James have missed only three and five games, respectively.
The Lakers have not been more than five games above .500 at any point this season, and since Dec. 21 have been hovering between one game over .500 and two games under. They have not won three straight games since Dec. 2-7. And although Davis is playing some of the best basketball of his career, it is not translating to consistency for the Lakers.
Even still, Davis’ attitude remains positive. He responded to James’ statement from their most recent loss that the Lakers can beat anybody or lose to anybody on any given night with a more upbeat spin, via Jovan Buha of the Athletic:
“You keep looking at the standings, what are we, tenth? Ninth or tenth? Four games, five games from being fifth or sixth. We’re not [that far] off. Like he said, we are capable enough to beat anybody in this league on any given night and we’re also capable of losing to anybody in this league on any given night. We just got to put a stretch of games together where we play good basketball, obviously we want to win basketball games to try to close that gap. Get everybody healthy and try to make a run.”
The Lakers are 4.5 games back of the Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings, who are tied for fifth place in the Western Conference. At this point in the season, that No. 5 seed is likely L.A.’s ceiling, as they sit nine games back of the No. 4-seeded Denver Nuggets.
The trade deadline may bring about new talent into the mix, but if it doesn’t, the Lakers still have all the tools to put together a run. Davis is confident in their ability to avoid the Play-In Tournament, but it starts with winning more than two of every 4-5 games over a multi-month span.
Austin Reaves: Lakers need to figure out better communication
As usual, the questions after another disappointing loss turn to what the Lakers can do to fix these issues. Reaves isn’t sure what the answer is because if they knew, they would fix it, but feels the entire organization must come together to figure everything out.
“If I had that answer, it’d be fixed. I think individually, we had to sit down and look ourselves in the mirror and kind of just ask what are we bringing to the table and start there. And then after that, like you said, that should have already been done. But we’re better than what our record indicates, I believe. That’s a great question and if I had those answers, I don’t think we’d be 24-25 right now. We’ll continue to try to figure that out, communication is probably the most important thing you can do as a team.”
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