How The Lakers Lost The Season Before The Tip.
The Lakers are just 2 years removed from the last title for the organization. They ran through Portland, Houston, Denver, and Miami in route to win the 17th title for the franchise. They had the best player in the league in Lebron James, along with Anthony Davis being the most dominant duo in the league. The downside for the season was that it happened in the bubble of Orlando on the heels of the world wide shut down from Covid-19. After that season the world happened. Anthony Davis played in only half of the games in the shortened 2020-2021 season, Lebron James only played in 45 games and was 36 during the season. The Lakers depended heavily on the two of them, but that is when the problems begin.
The Lakers tried to address the problem of the aging superstar in James, as well as the injury problem of Davis with adding another superstar in Russell Westbrook, a known triple double machine and former league MVP. The Lakers gave up quite a bit in players to get him, with Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Montrezl Harrell going the opposite way. The Lakers gave up a lot to get Westbrook and so far, Washington has so far been the team that has come out on top of that trade. Westbrook has averaged 18.1 points a game, to go along with 7 rebounds and 7 assist a game, he is also averaging 4 turnovers a game. The Lakers bringing in Westbrook was doomed from the beginning even though on paper it looked like a good idea to add the 3rd superstar.
The biggest glaring problem with adding Westbrook is that for him to be effective, he has to have the ball. Westbrook is not a shooter per say. He doesn’t take good shots, but he drives the paint and can make the pass to an open player. Lebron James isn’t a shooter per say either. Anthony Davis isn’t a shooter per say. Lebron James is his most effective when he is facilitating and orchestrating the offense from the point. He has become a better shooter which allows him to pull a defender closer and opens more space for cuts and space opening for shooters. When the defenders back off, he can dribble past the defender and either attack the basket or hit the open man for a jumper. Same thing for Westbrook. Davis needs the ball as he can post up a smaller defender in the paint or start on the perimeter against a slower traditional big man, and dribble past them to attack the basket, again like James and Westbrook.
The Lakers trading away assets like a Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was the beginning of the downward slope for this season, as both players can shoot the ball from the perimeter and the other additions that the lakers made for shooting in free agency with Malik Monk and Carmelo Anthony there would have been more threating shooters to go along with the dribble drive of James and Davis, plus players like Carmelo Anthony and Kuzma being able to play multiple positions in the front court would have given the Lakers the flexibility with Davis not guaranteed to be healthy and Lebron turning 37.
Overall, the Lakers trying to add a 3rd star to help James and Davis was the right decision, but the fact of adding a ball dependent star to a team that needed shooting wasn’t necessarily the right trade to make. The Lakers had the chance to trade for Bradley Beal and didn’t pull the trigger on that trade so because of that maybe the Lakers felt they needed to just make a trade to make the splash of trading.