The Los Angeles Lakers are in a bad spot right now. Sitting at 21-22 and eighth in the West, this group feels like it’s heading nowhere fast.
Most recently, L.A. fell in embarrassing fashion to the Denver Nuggets 133-96. Somehow even that final score doesn’t fully encapsulate how poorly the team played Saturday night.
After the fact, various members of the Lakers were understandably upset. During a postgame session with reporters, Russell Westbrook called out his teammates.
“We have to be able to do it if we want to win games,” Westbrook said. “We have to be scrappy and play harder. We have to be tough, and we haven’t shown that.”
Westbrook’s assessment was obviously correct, but it does hit a bit different when he is the one offering it. The 33-year-old has been an absolute disaster for most of this year. Much of the team’s woes can be attributed to his poor play. There’s a reason why he was recently publicly confronted with the question of whether he regrets coming to L.A.
That said, Westbrook was actually one of the Lakers’ better players in that humiliating defeat to Denver. He ended the game with 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting, five rebounds, three assists and, amazingly, no turnovers. Yet, somehow, he still finished with a +/- of -11, and the Lakers got smashed.
Part of the issue with Westbrook’s poor play is that L.A. sacrificed a lot to get him. There were other players available the team passed on to acquire him.
The hope was that Westbrook would be able to deliver on the faith the Lakers’ front office had in him. To date, he hasn’t.
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