Was it just weeks ago that many pundits pegged the Los Angeles Lakers as legitimate championship contenders? Was it just weeks ago that it looked like the Lakers had a realistic path to at least the Western Conference Finals after a regular season during which they had to endure multiple slumps, a remaking of their roster and tragedy off the court?
How things can drastically change in a short amount of time.
After the Lakers blew Game 3 and Game 4 of their first-round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves by falling apart in the final minutes, they now trail the series three games to one. It is now hard to imagine them coming back to win this series, let alone getting to at least the Western Conference Finals.
Sure, there is still technically a chance they end up doing both those things. If they win Game 5 at home on Wednesday and Game 6 on Friday, they would enter Game 7 in Los Angeles with the momentum and the emotional edge. It is not impossible.
But there may be a better chance of another tropical storm hitting Southern California this summer.
The reality is that the Lakers have been exposed, and now, it almost seems foolish that some of us felt a championship parade through downtown Los Angeles was possible this summer.
The most glaring deficiency the team has is a lack of size up front. Jaxson Hayes, their starting center, is their only rotational player who is taller than 6-foot-9, and he’s averaging a scant 1.8 points and 2.0 rebounds in 7.8 minutes a game in this series. On Sunday in Game 4, he played the first four minutes before head coach JJ Redick seemingly affixed him to the bench with industrial-strength glue for the rest of the afternoon.
LeBron James, who has to conserve his energy near the end of his 22nd season, is the only other rotational player on the team who is over 6-foot-8. On the other hand, the Timberwolves have four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, who is 7-foot-1, as well as Julius Randle, Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid, all three of whom are 6-foot-9, not to mention young and ravenous.
The Lakers also have a lack of depth, as illustrated by Redick’s head-scratching decision to play just five men through the entire second half of Game 4.
Forward Jarred Vanderbilt is serviceable, even though he is extremely limited on offense. Guard Gabe Vincent is serviceable only when he’s shooting well from 3-point range, which seems to happen about half the time, and guard Jordan Goodwin, who was called up from the G League a couple of months ago, simply cannot handle meaningful playing time in the playoffs.
Furthermore, the Lakers just haven’t had the time to build a championship mindset or championship chemistry. That starts in training camp and is supposed to develop over the course of an entire season, if not multiple seasons. As presently constituted, this time was cobbled together during midwinter, and there are still kinks to work out.
When training camp started at the end of last summer, many predicted the Lakers would, at best, be a play-in tournament team, and their roster had even more holes than it currently has. That’s not exactly conducive to building a championship mindset.
February’s Luka Doncic was made with the future in mind, not necessarily this season. And this season, in all likelihood, is all but over and could end with an anemic whimper sometime this week.