Lakers are the wrong kind of interesting amid fan scrutiny
Gap year, huh? Who cares! Nobody turns down the volume on the Lakers. Nobody lowers the heat.
The scrutiny and psychoanalysis continues like Luka Doncic yelling at the referees – incessantly and with impressive endurance. About as strong. “Our losses,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said recently, “are bigger than other teams because we are the Lakers.”
All other NBA teams are graded on a curve; bad breaks and reasonable expectations are factored into the end-of-season score.
The Lakers are a pass-fail next-level course; They either win a championship or they fail.
They are between 37 and 24 years old, but they would still consider dropping the course if they could – but they can’t. So they move forward, try to figure it out, their window closes and their fans’ frustration grows.
“I think it’s awesome,” guard Austin Reaves said of the brilliant — no, blinding — lights constantly trained on the team.
Lakers coach JJ Redick leads his team in a victory over the Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“I think it’s one of the best – if not the best – organizations in all of sports. With that comes….”
A big responsibility? A golden opportunity?
“…honestly, chaos.”
What Reaves meant: “If it’s good, it’s great. And if it’s bad, it’s miserable. They expect to win games, the fans do. And that’s what we’re here to do, we’re here to win and win at a high level. We know that.”
That’s why Redick signed up to come coach them, he said. “My own personal psychosis,” he called it. He swears he wants smoke.
“The reality is, everyone is always going to have an opinion,” Redick said Tuesday before his team earned a 110-101 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, who are healthier than before but still have a 19-44 record. “As long as professional sports have existed, everyone has always had an opinion. There have been discussions about sports, there have been barbershops, there have been chat rooms. Everyone has had an opinion. Now everyone’s opinion is more easily accessible. It’s just more amplified now, but that’s normal.”
And then he interrupted a question to return to a previous question about his gaming vocation, having to refute strangers on the Internet who were taking down his work. “It still fascinates me, by the way,” Redick said. “How do you know we’re calling plays or not? … It’s fascinating. It’s really interesting.”
It’s the Lakers. Interesting, even if they are not necessarily, basketball-wise. The front office chose to protect future cap space and raise capital rather than significantly improve the team now around Doncic and LeBron James. And players play as if they realize that most of them probably weren’t part of long-term plans.
And who else but the Lakers to bring some spice during the dreary stretch of the season between the trade deadline and the playoffs?
There’s no team with a greater ratio of molehills-turned-mountains, so of course it was national news when Redick and Doncic had a disagreement on the bench during Saturday’s win over the Golden State Warriors. It wasn’t a big deal, and they laughed about it later, Redick insisted Tuesday.
“I didn’t feel any tension. He told me, ‘No, I didn’t care,'” Redick said of Doncic. “You do it and you move on.”
Lakers guard Austin Reaves dribbles around Pelicans forward Herbert Jones Tuesday at Crypto.com Arena.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Carry on, knowing that every interaction and play call and outcome will be dissected and debated.
So Doncic may lead the league in scoring (32.4 points per game) and average the third most assists (8.6), but his defensive limitations and incessant, unproductive banter with officials attract the most attention from some critics.
And so the Lakers, 1 game and a half from third place, impress no one. Not when they’re 14-18 against teams .500 or better. Not when they’re 1-8 against the league’s top four teams, with those losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics ending by an average of 20 points.
Too bad for the Lakers to have to face good teams in the playoffs.
Competent teams, full of heart and desire, like the Denver Nuggets, who will be next on the program on Thursday.
With a 38-24 and a half lead over the Lakers, star center Nikola Jokic’s team is still formidable — and looking to avenge a loss to Redick’s team in their opener, 115-107 in a game Jokic didn’t play.
A Lakers “A” game in Denver? Now it might be worth talking about. That would be quite interesting – although we’ll dig into it and discuss it anyway. With the volume at maximum.
