It was about a week ago, Markieff Morris said, when he said something to assistant coach Jason Kidd that has only sunk in more as the Lakers have slumped.
All-Star big man Anthony Davis was out. Starting point guard Dennis Schröder was a surprise scratch with COVID-19 protocols. Pretty quickly, the defending champions had gone from conference-leading world beaters to scrapping for wins against any team on any night.
“I told J-Kidd about a week ago,” he remembered, “‘Now we really have to think the game, more so than just play.’”
In the Lakers’ start to the season, there was a bit of “roll the balls out and go” to their gamesmanship. A 21-6 start didn’t have the crisp edges of their previous year, which might be natural for a returning title-winner that didn’t get the chance to take a four-month victory lap like every champion before it thanks to the shortened offseason.
The Lakers had a tendency to drift, with both slow starts and lackadaisical finishes, but in Morris’ own words: “I think early on, we won with talent a lot.”
Consistent with a season that has seen players going in and out of lineups with injuries and COVID-19 protocols, now the Lakers are dealing with their own lean times. And the wins that came easily are now hard to grasp. A fourth consecutive loss, to Utah on Wednesday, was certainly predictable, but losing by 25 points doesn’t swallow easy.
“It’s a tough stretch for us,” Lakers star LeBron James said. “You know this won’t define who we will be for the rest of the season and for the long haul. That’s for sure.”
Of course, for the Lakers, it’s been a long haul already. Between July 30, when they started play in the NBA bubble in Orlando, and that loss to the Jazz, the Lakers have played 62 games, including their 21-game playoff run. No team has played more, including the Miami Heat (61). Even among the teams who went deep into the postseason last year, the Lakers have the best record (22-11) compared to this season’s Heat (15-17), Boston Celtics (15-17) and Denver Nuggets (17-14) – if the season ended today, the Lakers would be the only squad of last season’s final four to be guaranteed a playoff spot outside the play-in tournament.
That seems to have an accumulated toll, which Coach Frank Vogel has seen in the team’s 3-point shooting that has taken a nosedive, or in the transition attack that has slowed of late. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said in an interview with Spectrum SportsNet that he has felt it in his legs. With four straight losses, the Lakers have now matched their worst losing streak of Vogel’s tenure, dating to December 2019 when they faced a stretch of elite teams and struggled with injuries.
Morris said he’s taken up meditation between games to even his mind during a schedule that has been compressed to squeeze 72 games into something resembling the normal NBA calendar so the league can complete the playoffs before the Olympics in late July. The Lakers played nine back-to-backs during their 71-game regular-season schedule last year, which was broken up by the onset of the COVID-19 schedule. In the last 35 games of this season alone, they have eight back-to-backs.
“You have to kind of trick yourself into not being sore or not being tired,” Morris said. “This is the most basketball that I’ve ever played in my life – this season and last season combined. It’s an unbelievable amount of basketball that we all are playing. Mentally, it gets draining. Especially when you lose.”
James cited that some of the Lakers’ younger players are still learning how to pick up in the absence of starters Davis and Schröder, but he also tapped on his own shoulder, saying he knows he has to shoot better (just 24.1% on 3-pointers in February).
James also said he embraced the struggles the Lakers are going through: “We hope that we’re crowned the champion, but we like to put in the work.”
Morris put it another way: Without struggle in the regular season, it’s harder to combat adversity in the postseason. The Lakers hope point Schröder is cleared to return Friday against the Portland Trail Blazers, and they hope Davis will return soon in March. But they can’t count on anything – especially in a season when one possible COVID-19 exposure can put a player on ice for a week – and they have to learn to win regardless of who is available.
“If you ask me, we need it,” Morris said. “Because you never know with injuries. You never know in the playoffs. You never know. We need these challenging times to really find who we really are.”
There’s not much the Lakers can do about the schedule except get to the All-Star break, which everyone at this juncture has acknowledged they sorely need. In the meantime, Lakers center Marc Gasol said in the past he’s tried to focus on fundamentals during losing streaks: In the Lakers’ case, he thinks they can improve on their defensive discipline and communication that broke down against the inside-outside attack of the Jazz.
“We can learn from it,” Gasol said. “Obviously, we have to learn from it.”
He paused thoughtfully. Then added: “And as soon as possible.”
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February 26, 2021 at 04:56AM
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Lakers try to toughen up during season-worst slump - OCRegister
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