The Lakers’ season has been marred by injuries to its stars, but the Angelinos’ problems go beyond that. No continuity, no consistency or game plan, and Frank Vogel’s troupe chained disappointments despite the brilliance of a LeBron James who was still enormous. Unfortunately, we do not take stock of the King but of the franchise as a whole and we do not hide from you that sometimes sleep prevailed over the bricks of Russell Westbrook. In short, the following lines are necessarily different from those we expected to write at the start of the season.
# WHAT TRASHTALK HAD ANNOUNCED
It is an understatement to say that the Lakers arrive this season with big ambitions. After a disappointing season with injuries, including that of Anthony Davis – once more – who only played 36 regular games, the Lakers arrived in the first round of the Playoffs without rhythm once morest the Suns clearly above collectively. Direction the exit door following six games. New season, new arrivals, new hopes. Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo or even Dwight Howard arrive in the city of angels to play with LeBron James and Anthony Davis and the objective is clear: to win a ring. The team is old but the talent and experience are enormous, in short the Lakers will be part of the top two in the West, with at least 58 wins over the regular.
# WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The Lakers start the season with three big tests at home once morest teams that will come out on top in the West six months later: the Warriors, Suns and Grizzlies. BronBron, AD and the Brodie play under the same tunic and that alone portends something magnificent. Result, two defeats to start, then a snatch victory once morest Memphis. Nothing serious, it’s the start of the season and the stars still have to get up to speed. The matches follow one another but not the victories, contrary to what was expected of the troop of Frank Vogel who cannot manage to set up a game at the height of the talent that there is on the floor. First stoppage for LeBron James in early November, due to pain in the abdominal belt. Bron returns a little over two weeks later but the results of the Angelinos are still groping, despite some big performances from the King. The Unibrow struggles for its part to be regular but we feel it capable of raising the tone therefollowing. But bim, you know the song. Anthony Davis suffered a knee injury in Minneapolis in mid-December, a sprained ligament that kept him off the court for more than five weeks and destroyed any potential to build momentum with this group. The Lakers even continues with a series of five defeats, Russell Westbrook has not yet given the best version of himself with a few moments of dazzling but struggles to chain over several games. At the end of 2021, the purple and gold franchise has a record of 18 wins for… 19 losses, do we say goodbye to the top of the conf table and start playing basketball to at least aim for the Playoffs?
The Lakers start 2022 with a feel-good four-game winning streak, but spoiler, it will be their longest of their season. Sad. After victories that rhymed with hope, the Angelinos quickly fall back into their traps and the return of the most famous single eyebrow in America does not change anything and, moreover, it will only be short-lived. AD relapsed in mid-February during the reception of the Jazz, this time it was his ankle that took, fortunately no fracture but a bad sprain which once once more prevented him from taking a real rhythm. He will not return until the end of April, for the last matches of the year, in other words, when it will be… already too late. LeBron James makes his stats, in the space of a week in March he slaps two performances which make him go even further into the history of this sport sincehe became the first player to score 30,000 points, 10,000 assists and 10,000 rebounds, before surpassing the 36,930 point mark, leaving Karl Malone behind and having only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ahead of him to chase. WOW. Unfortunately, King James is not enough for Frank Vogel’s troupe, who now plays to ensure the play-in and loses far too often.
From mid-January until the end of the season, the Lakers won only twelve times, which gives us… 30 LOSSES IN 42 MATCHES. And that was supposed to end up at the top of the table, lol xd ptdr. Finally, Russel Westbrook & co feed the critics and delight those who compared this team to an EPAHD team at the start of the season. The old guys have also taken some serious routs, including a 140-111 in Phoenix, which at the time had taken this match for an All-Star Game. The idea of having a good defense will never really appear, the purple and gold franchise finished 28th worst defense tied with the Blazers (not very flattering, no) with 115.1 points conceded each evening. The play-in race now feels more like a tanking race, LeBron James will miss the last crucial games since he twists his ankle once morest the Pelicans in late March. He returns in early April with the equally eagerly awaited return of Anthony Davis and with the two together, no one sees how the team might lose in a game with such a stake once morest these same Pels. King James plants 38 checkers, AD puts in 23, but history repeats itself…the Lakers still lose. The defeat once morest the Suns a few days later rang the bell and it was now official: following expectations that placed them at the very top of the West at the start of the season, Frank Vogel’s troupe would not even take part in the play- in. Which means no BronBron in the Playoffs, for the fourth time in 19 years. Emoji crying, Frank Vogel takes the door from the buzzer of the last game, next.
# THE IMAGE OF THE SEASON
Unibrow’s ankle turns badly in the encounter once morest Jazz on February 17. An image that more broadly reflects AD’s continual injuries, including his sprained ligament in mid-December. Anthony Davis was to be the key man for the Lakers with LeBron James, but his stoppages never allowed him to establish a real rhythm, to create continuity with his teammates. With 23.2 points and almost 10 rebounds on average, he was far from bad when he was on the floor and we feel that with fewer sores, he might have step-up a little more and changed the face of the Angelinos . In the end, the strong winger only played 40 games this season, far too few to form this duo which was to dominate the NBA with BronBron, this duo that everyone was waiting for at the turn of this season. On this regular, they only participated in 22 games together, for eleven wins and eleven losses. And the record of the Lakers when AD was there is far from famous too, with 17 wins and 23 losses.
# THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE SEASON
This group of stars, consisting of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony. These four guys have each left their mark on NBA history in their own way. Gathered under the same tunic, it might only work… or not. No continuity, no consistency and even if the injuries of LeBron and AD in particular played their part in this failure, the performances of this quartet were very far from the hopes of the start of the season. When you are told that adding stars is not enough to form a real team, it seems like a mess. But we have just had the illustration of this once more because this collective will never have succeeded in… constituting a real collective. Homonyms team. Frank Vogel failed to install a game plan, and the disappointing performance of Russell Westbrook in particular did not help. RW scored 18.5 points per night (the last time he did worse was in 2009-10, in his sophomore season), with 7.4 rebounds and 7.1 assists on the sheet but, unfortunately , a name and performances that have often been reported as the crux of the problem in LA, going so far as to make him live, psychologically, a most complicated exercise.
# IT HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANT
King James bears his name too well, because the catastrophic season of the Lakers hides behind it still impressive performances from the cyborg. The guy is 37 years old but comes out with an average of 30.3 scoring points, the second best total of his career. What a sick man. With that, it’s 52.4% shooting success, 8.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists every night, the veteran almost seems to regain a youthful look… if it weren’t for these little sores that marred his season. Only 56 games played, and all along the cards of a LBJ too lonely to string together victories. In this ocean of Lakers failures, the King has experienced two historic events. In March, he became the first player in the NBA to score 30,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 10,000 assists in his career, adding to all those others that make LeBron James one of the best basketball players in the game. ‘story. A few days later, he overtook Karl Malone in number of points scored and thus became the second best scorer in the history of the League, only to have the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in front of him, whom he might elsewhere well dethrone next season.
# THE FOLLOWING ?
Goodbye EPAHD, hello nursery? At first… no. The Lakers still seem to have short-term goals and they don’t have any Draft picks for the upcoming school year. Do we keep the LeBron – AD duo, hoping that they stay in shape for a whole season? This seems to be predicted. But what do we bring around the two stars? What regarding Russell Westbrook who failed to perform and who takes up a lot of space in the roster and in the accountant? The objective of Rob Pelinka, the GM of the franchise, will be to create consistency in the workforce and to bring complementarity, which has been lacking this season with the Angelinos. Another important point, that of strengthening the defense, Frank Vogel may have his share of responsibility in this aspect, in any case the players must feel much more concerned by this side of the floor if they want to win matches and achieve a season that meets the objectives. Answer this summer to know the new workforce, hoping for fans of the purple and gold franchise that there will be changes.
Rotten season of the Lakers in which nothing is to be kept apart from the vain exploits of LeBron James, who will nevertheless have added records to his list. The franchise should once more bet on the King and Unibrow, and everyone knows the capabilities of such a duo, but the physical condition must still hold up and they must be surrounded better than that. The Angelinos were in hell this season and repeating such a fiasco is unthinkable for the franchise. A lot of things have to move, hoping that Rob Pelinka does his job a little better.
Source Texte : ESPN
