This past summer was a pivotal time for the Los Angeles Lakers; Considering just two seasons ago the Lakers won the championship when they where in the bubble. That was Anthony Davis first year in LA and him and Lebron James where a deadly duo. A lot of people thought the “Lakeshow” where going to run it back the following season and win the finals. Not everything went according to plan Anthony Davis and LeBron James where dealing with several injuries that led the Lakers to fall from a championship team to becoming the 7th seed and having to go through the play-in tournament to even get into the playoffs. The purple and gold would barley hold on in there play-in game against the Golden State Warriors thus securing there playoff spot.  But they would have the misfortune of paying against the number one team in the west the red hot Phoenix Suns.  The Lakers would win two games in the series at one point even having a 2-1 lead.

The final tally for that series was 4-2 in the Suns favor the finishing the defending champs season. It was obvious the Lakers needed some new pieces if they wanted to get back to the finals. There where several people that wanted to play for the Lakers, those people being Demar Derozan and Russell Westbrook. I thought the better choice would have been to go after Demar Derozan considering what he can bring to the Lakers to complement AD and LeBron James. But LeBron was heart set on getting Russell Westbrook.  Along with bringing Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Trevor Ariza, Deandre Jordan among others this was shaping up to be a veteran heavy team. I was skeptical of this especially considering how old this team is, if you assemble this team in 2008 you have a super team but the NBA is different now.  It is going to be very hard to compete with these good young teams, like the Phoenix Suns, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Miami Heat, and other great teams in the NBA.

And it’s unfortunate that I am right, this Laker team has been a DISASTER.  Russell Westbrook leading the NBA with turnovers with 271. Anthony Davis being injured for a majority of the season and not being much help when he is healthy.The only reason the Lakers have stayed a float is because LeBron James has been playing lights out basketball averaging 30 points a game in his 19th season at 37 years old.  LeBron should not be having to give you 30 points and occasionally 50 points in order for you to be successful. The whole point of getting Russell Westbrook and getting AD a couple of years back was to get some of that pressure off of LeBron James, and they haven’t lived up to their portion of the deal.  Some people believe that Russ isn’t the biggest problem why this team is losing they believe it is a management issue. SB nation was quoted as saying, “Rob Pelinka didn’t pull the trigger on a Kyle Lowry trade last season.” So the Lakers had a chance to go after Kyle Lowry they chose not to go after him.  Apparently there are other issues going on inside of the Lakers locker room revolving their head coach Frank Vogel.  A quote from the guardian states, “the Lakers are experiencing strife, with head coach Frank Vogel reportedly on the hot seat fighting for his job..”

I don’t think this is all on Frank Vogel he can only do so much, his job is to coach and put the team in a good spot to win; It is the team’s job to go out and execute and win games. As it’s looking right now the best case scenario for the Lakers is them returning the play-in and securing the 8th seed. If they get the 8 seed they are going to be facing one of the top seeds in the West. Sadly I think the Lakers have nothing to look forward to and they know they need to make moves this summer to return to that excellence that we expect from this franchise.