HOUSTON, TX – The Los Angeles Lakers recently snapped a five-game losing streak against the lowly Houston Rockets and it took a triple-double from both LeBron James and Russell Westbrook to make that happen.
Like several other teams throughout the league, the Lakers have been hit hard with a COVID outbreak and injuries, including star forward Anthony Davis, expected to be out through January with an MCL sprain.
There are too many other issues to list as to why the Lakers are currently 17-18 and sit in the seventh seed in the Western Conference playoff picture. However, Westbrook now finds himself on center stage as why this Lakers season has been disappointing thus far.
The Lakers acquired Westbrook to take burden off of both Davis and James (mostly James). He was supposed to keep the ship steady if one or the other were either out of the game or not playing at all. His playmaking, scoring, and versatility were supposed to be at an elite level where the soon to be 37-year-old James and injury-prone Davis wouldn’t have to carry as much of the load throughout the regular season.
However, Westbrook’s play has been erratic this season. While the triple-doubles look great on a box score, they haven’t led to many wins for the Lakers. His turnovers have been excessive and ill-timed; he’s made poor decisions offensively in the clutch moments of the game often moving too fast for his good; and his defense has been porous at best.
Even some of his comments to the media about winning a championship not being the most important thing to him and playing the way he wants to play, hasn’t sat well with Lakers fans, who always expect this team to be in title contention every year. Those comments make people wonder is he truly willing to sacrifice in order to help the Lakers win a title.
Perhaps the biggest issue is the fact that the Lakers can’t really do anything about it at this point. Between his contract, which is paying him $44 million this season and $47 million next season (assuming he opts in) and his deteriorating value, it’s unlikely a team will likely want to trade assets to acquire him unless they receive other young assets or draft picks attached with Westbrook.
It would be unfair to blame all of the Lakers’ issues on Westbrook. However, this is the side effect of going all-in to win a championship by building a “super team.” It forces you to trade young, complimentary role players, losing financial flexibility, and building a roster of aging vets and guys who have deficiencies in their game.
While there is still time to turn this season around for Westbrook and the Lakers, they clearly don’t look like a championship and will be lucky to avoid the Play-In tournament. It may not be entirely Westbrook’s fault; but he was the guy, a former league MVP, expected to make things better not worse and that hasn’t happened.
