Can The Los Angeles Lakers Salvage Their Season Or Is Their Dream Team Project Destined To Fail?

The actions of general manager Rob Pelinka over the course of the off-season led to the Los Angeles Lakers, off the back of a decidedly average previous campaign, is considered one of the favorites to clinch the NBA title. Sadly for fans of the team, it hasn’t proven that way.

The team currently has a .500 record, and that means that LeBron James and co. may have to look to the ‘play-in’ tournament as a way into the playoffs, such has been their very mediocre season thus far.

Pelinka brought in a number of top-quality additions to Frank Vogel’s roster, with Russell Westbrook being chief among them. This made the Lakers very much a team on bettors’ radars for hot sports betting picks, but the new set-up hasn’t gelled as the franchise would have hoped.

The Lakers have found it hard to hit a consistent run of form, and a very clear example of this came when the team, following a four-game winning streak just after Christmas, then lost successive games to the Memphis Grizzlies, the Sacramento Kings and then were wiped out by the Denver Nuggets by 36 points.

That defeat led to a barrage of criticism, and it’s clear that Vogel needs to get his team in order for the second half of the season; otherwise, they may miss out entirely on postseason action.

The big loss to the Nuggets led to LeBron James issuing a public apology, and Vogel himself was very vocal following the 133-97 defeat, stating;

“I think when you’re getting your tails kicked, you’re going to see bad body language,”

“I don’t think that’s ever not the case, but we got to be better in terms of pushing through. We did start the game with decent energy. Joker (Jokic) creates a lot of problems for our defense, for any defense. Creates a lot of mismatches. You need to double team, and they made us pay every single time, so credit them for playing a hell of a game offensively. Shooting the crap out of the basketball, but we got to be better.”

“We got to get back to the drawing board and get our defense right. We haven’t performed well enough in the last few games on that side of the ball, and offensively we’re not moving the way we did for a stretch. There are some things we can definitely correct and will correct, but also definitely have to improve on the defensive side of the ball.”

Now is very much the time for harsh words from both the team’s leader and their head coach; anything less, and they may well start to see the wheels come off entirely on their season. There is a sense that the team doesn’t show enough intensity, and at the beginning of the season, this could be down to the team believing, incorrectly, that they were more than capable of defeating any opposition and that lack of desire now looks just plain unprofessional.