On February 10th, the Lakers lost at home against Milwaukee. It was their third straight loss and they were 6 games below the .500. They looked done but they turned their season around and reached the Western Conference Finals with both Lebron and Davis staying relatively healthy. The team also made some successful trades and their coaching staff was capable of forming a nice rotation.
The Westbrook experiment wasn’t working and so, the Lakers traded him away. The team bolstered their roster with DeAngelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura and Malik Beasley. These players had a positive impact in different parts of the season and the Lakers became a more cohesive team.
Austin Reeves got more minutes in the second half of the season and his production was outstanding: 17.6 ppg, 57.8% FG, 44.3% 3pts and 5.5/2.0 A/TO ratio. Together with Lebron and Davis, they formed a solid trio that carried the team the rest of the way: +16.4 net rating in 826 possessions.
In the playoffs, the Lakers had an incredible run by eliminating the #2 seed Memphis and then the reigning champions Golden State, both in 6 games. However, the LA team had no answer for Nikola Jokic even though they tried different strategies and Denver beat them in the WCF.
2023/24 OUTLOOK:
Head coach Darvin Ham did a solid job adjusting the team midseason and he gained the respect from his veteran players. With such a good end of the season, the Lakers’ front office decided to give the main core another chance to compete. The Lakers lost Dennis Schroder in the offseason but they did quite well in signing Gabe Vincent to replace him, a player who is coming from a very good run with the Heat and who will be bringing some badly needed perimeter shooting to this franchise.
The Lakers have however a depth issue behind Anthony Davis, as they only have Christian Wood and Jaxson Hayes to replace him. These two players are very far from having the defensive level of AD.
We can’t also forget that Lebron James will be 39 years old in December, so we should proceed with caution when predicting his production this season. However, he still averaged almost 29 points per game last season. If Lebron manages to remain healthy this season, then we can count on the Lakers to be very competitive once again this season.
