The season is still young, but the LA teams are struggling, with both the Clippers and Lakers losing their 3rd straight games (fourth straight on the road). Without overreacting, which LA team has bigger problems at this point?
The Clippers are going through player adjustments and Ty Lue has pointed to stagnant offense because the superstar quartet can’t figure out what to do with each other. Imo that’s easier to figure than what the Lakers face - the supposedly deep roster hasn’t worked, Reaves’ struggle was especially unexpected, and the team repeatedly falls flat without Lebron. Both have been mid defensively.
BUT, the Lakers had one hell of a turnaround last season… so yea, I’m not ruling either out, just wanna look at the problems they face atm.
“The supposedly deep roster”
The lakers are the most injured team in the NBA currently. Rui, Hayes, prince, vando, ad, Vincent, etc have all missed time. Missing 5 plus players will make any team not deep.
Lakers are horrible. No defense in the backcourt and the wings are always injured. Letting Dennis go for Gabe was the biggest blunder since Caruso for THT.
We can’t evaluate them until they actually play as a healthy squad. Their current record is not reflective of their actual potential.
Clippers need to figure out what to do with Plumlee out indefinitely. They were already at a disadvantage against teams with size that could crash the offensive glass, but it’s become a truly dire situation.
Either they roll the dice with a FA pickup or see what kind of return they can get from trading Norman Powell (a fairly good bench player but no longer essential with Harden on the roster). If they repeat last year’s mistake and wait too late then they’ll have to dig themselves out of a decent sized hole just to try and avoid the play-in.
Lakers defense and rebounding has been really bad this year. However, they were the number one postseason defense with 4 of the current starters. Vando isn’t an all world player but he’s that connective piece that should bring this team together. He’s the POA defender, energy guy and our best rebounder outside AD. Doesn’t help we are missing 3-4 rotation guys every game.
Lakers are playing Christian Wood 23.5 minutes a game. I don’t care what kind of smoke and mirrors bullshit may emanate around that dude but he plays losing basketball and teams that play him will lose. It’s nothing personal, and I can’t explain it, it just is.
When I read the title I thought the LA Funk was a team name, like g league or something.