The month of December has not been kind to the Los Angeles Lakers. The team has lost 12 of 13 games this month, completely undoing the good feelings surrounding the team after an unexpected 10-10 start to the season.
One of the things that hurt the Lakers has been injuries as nearly every rotation player has missed time. Two of the bigger ones the Lakers had to deal with were the injuries to their starting backcourt of D’Angelo Russell and Nick Young, though both eventually returned and have played relatively well.
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Nonetheless, with the losses piling up, it is easy for a young team to lose confidence and give up. Young, however, doesn’t see that as he still sees fight in the Lakers according to Joey Ramirez of Lakers.com:
“The fight is there, but we just gotta learn how to get back to winning,” Nick Young said.
Russell also added that the team isn’t quitting, but rather slowly figuring things out via Mark Medina of the OC Register:
“We’re slowly figuring it out,” Russell said. “We’re definitely not quitting. We’re just trying to figure it out.”
The attitude is definitely what fans want to hear from this team as a slump like this can absolutely derail a season, especially for a team that doesn’t know how to win yet. Of course, the Lakers have said things like this before; fans are ready for some action.
This Lakers team is in the first year of a true rebuild with the focus being on development first. With a young team, there is going to be a lot of ups and downs and inconsistencies. The important thing is for the Lakers to continue playing hard and learning from these mistakes.
The talent is obviously there on this roster, but it is a learning process. As long as the team keeps fighting like Russell and Young say they are, things will eventually turn around.