Two seasons ago, the last game the Los Angeles Lakers played before the trade deadline felt like a referendum on the state of the franchise – a 42-point loss to the Indiana Pacers as rumors circulated. Tuesday’s 128-111 road loss to the New Orleans Pelicans was not like that that for the Lakers, after all, they are the defenders of the NBA, but the resulting anguish was hugely reminiscent.
“You have to be realistic,” Kyle Kuzma later said, ceasing to be the player’s default spokesman with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, both due to injuries. “It’s a challenge. But it’s nothing we can’t overcome.”
The Pelicans ’game went ugly, with the Lakers up to 30 points (coinciding with the number of points they outscored in the paint (62-32)), while they didn’t have their best defender at Davis and their center initial, Marc Gasol, who missed his ninth straight game as he rose after a stint in the league’s COVID-19 safety and health protocols.
When the 2019 Lakers hit rock bottom in Indiana, tension arose from the team’s search for Davis, with the young collection of budding Los Angeles stars wondering if the sun was setting in his careers in Southern California.
These Lakers are not in an identical situation. Some of those young players from two years ago were on the other side of things on Tuesday, with Brandon Ingram leading all scorers with 36 points on 14-on-21 shots and Josh Hart scoring 15 rebounds, five assists and five robberies even though he fired only 1-for-9. (His anguish with the February 2019 deadline was not unfounded: Davis ’trade with pelicans happened four months later).
No, the Lakers aren’t looking to make wholesale changes to get a second star paired with James this time. They have their franchise pillars, even though one is in a standing boot and the other isn’t playing since Valentine’s Day.
Still, there is still pressure to improve around margins and increase their chances of a championship in the postseason. For much of the season, it looked like it would involve examining the buying market of an impact veteran or two veterans, just as LA added Markieff Morris last year, and became a vital piece. during his career in the bubble.
But now, in a three-game losing streak, reaching the Lakers’ 7-10 record since Davis was injured and dropped to No. 4 in the Western Conference standings – just 2 ½ games above Portland’s No. 6 – those could adjust the plans.
“I think it will definitely have an impact on the timeline for the trade,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said over the weekend when asked about the status of his team.
One name mentioned as a potential candidate to be transferred is Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The goalkeeper was rewarded with a three-year, $ 40 million deal that came out of a postseason in which he averaged 10.7 points over 37.8% from a distance of 3 points while was one of the most reliable perimeter defenders the Lakers had, but he has seen his The 3-point percentage dropped this season from 52.9% in December, to 46.0% in January and to 32.1% in February , to return to 37.5% this month before the night of filming on Tuesday 1 September. Asked where he was, he was frank.
“I don’t know who participates in the professional conversations, I didn’t really pay attention to it or even hear about it,” he said. “It was the first time I heard about it. But I don’t know … Man, I think energy is good, I don’t think anyone cares about any business unless you keep it personal.”
The Lakers certainly keep things personal. While it has become fashionable for some league executives to convey commercial intentions to the media as a sort of test balloon to assess a player’s worth, virtually none of the rumors you’ll read this week come from the vice president of Lakers basketball operations. and the office of CEO Rob Pelinka in El Segundo, California.
This is another way things are different from two years ago, when the Lakers were complicit in the chaos that occurred until the deadline with the information they were going through.
No, it’s not the Lakers ’fault that they only had a 71-day low season, and the quick change could have contributed to Davis’ right leg injuries. They had no control over Solomon Hill diving into James ’ankle to try to steal the ball. They had no way of knowing his favorite status would be so short with a former James Harden vice president forcing his departure to Houston to join a couple of other offensive masters Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in the networks. Brooklyn, catapulting the possibilities of Brooklyn. as aspirants. They didn’t get to pick the time spot when James would come out and hit himself in a tortuous stretch of eight games in 12 days.
That is the reality, however. This is where things stand, and that’s why this moment, less than 48 hours before Thursday’s trade deadline, has the same feeling for the Lakers as it did two days before the two-year deadline.
There is a lot at stake.
“My expectation is that we will win games with this group and I believe in the group we have,” Vogel said. “If nothing happens [at the trade deadline], we will win matches and discover a way to win matches during this stretch, and in the long run it will benefit us. I’m not sure if we’ll see any change or not. … Most business deadlines are a lot of conversations that come to nothing, and that’s my expectation as a coach. ”
For Kuzma, one of the only remnants, along with Alex Caruso, who came out of that young core a couple of years ago, maybe there were some lessons learned.
No matter what happens in the commercial term, there is work to be done.
“I think we just have to look at the drawing board, keep trusting each other, try to play each other on both sides of the ball,” Kuzma said. “I think if we can do that, we give ourselves a chance every night.
“That’s the challenge we’re facing. We just have to leave it behind and leave.”