Lakers: How Many Clippers Would Be Upgrades Over Lakers Role Players?
The Athletic's Sam Vecenie and Cole Huff chatted on the latter's Game Theory podcast about the disappointing lack of quality roster depth for your Los Angeles Lakers. With the team's loss last night to the Clippers still top of mind, Vecenie proposed an interesting exercise for Huff.
"How many players on the Clippers roster do you think would be the Lakers' third-best player right now?" Vecenie asked. "So basically how many players on the Clippers do you think are better than Patrick Beverley and Russell Westbrook?"
The duo went on to choose to count Clippers All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, but obviously there is absolutely no way the Lakers would be able to a field a team with those four salaries, so for now let's look into all the Clips role players Huff and Vecenie wound up citing.
Center Ivica Zubac, shooting guard Norman Powell, point guard John Wall, power forward Marcus Morris, swingman Terrance Mann, point guard Reggie Jackson, wing Robert Covington, and shooting guard Luke Kennard (mostly for his value as a perimeter three-point threat) all were considered better than any candidate for the status of being the Lakers' third-best performer. Nicolas Batum, who certainly could be in the running for this, was counted out.
The duo offered up some interesting commentary on a few of those selections.
"I'm a huge Terrance Mann fan, I know he only played six minutes, but I think.. he would start on a bunch of teams," Huff opined.
"I think unequivocally John Wall would be better [than anyone on the Lakers roster beyond James or Davis]," Vecenie said. "He doesn't look like his best John Wall [self] when he was with the Wizards and flying up and down the court, but I [still] think we saw enough tonight that would make me [list Wall above the Lakers role players]."
"I think Luke Kennard would be incredibly important as a shooter... You think about adding Luke Kennard on the wing, taking kick-outs from LeBron James. Luke Kennard is a more important player to that team than Patrick Beverley or Russell Westbrook is," Vecenie said. "It's probably a better team [with Kennard on the roster instead of Beverley or Westbrook."
When asked to weigh Covington against Beverley (who is definitely better than Westbrook right now, in this writer's opinion), Huff said, "I think they would be pretty similar but he can shoot a little better and [has] more versatility with his size... He's just bigger. He's a bigger Pat Bev."
With none of those guys actually available, who is the Lakers' third-best player? Through two games, it seems like Juan Toscano-Anderson, Lonnie Walker IV, Austin Reaves, Kendrick Nunn, Beverley, and Westbrook could be vying for that third-best Laker slot. All these players have been somewhat uneven across the two contests, and Beverley has struggled to score much at all, but his defense (when he's allowed to play through contact a bit) and leadership remain unbowed.
"This team is just under-talented right now," Vecenie said. "And they are an ill-fitting group of players, as LeBron alluded to on opening night, when he talked about the lack of shooting, saying they don't exactly have a lot of lasers out there."
"It's just really weird, because we've seen what the recipe for success is on LeBron James teams throughout his career," Huff noted. "I really don't understand why you wouldn't surround him with shooting for the second straight year? I know that they took a little bit of a different approach this offseason getting rid of the older guys and bringing in some fresh legs. That's good and all, but you've still got to be able to produce."
