What's Wrong With the Lakers and What's the Solution to Turning This Season Around?

This is getting really bad.

"At 3-4, the LA Lakers currently sit at 16th on Robby Kalland's Power Rankings."

I started writing this before LA's game against Houston, where they happened to lose by 34 to a rebuilding team. Wow. Expect that 16th spot on the rankings to plummet.

This loss was a disaster at every level. 

Offensively (94 points?). Defensively (128 given up?). Sure, there were injuries. But this is a bigger issue than that. 

Teams play without their best/second-best player all the time. You see it almost every night of league-wide games. For example, Wednesday night, Denver played without Jamal Murray and beat the Golden State Warriors. 

Dallas has played multiple games without Kyrie Irving. Phoenix has played without Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. Neither of them have been blown out to this degree, let alone by Houston.

Houston made twice as many 3-point shots as the Lakers did at a 14% better clip (14 vs 7, 42% vs 28%). 

And, worse, as expected, LA was out-rebounded by 23, 57 to 34. 

The offensive rebound margin was 9, and each Rockets starter had at least 4 total rebounds. 

The Lakers offense is probably the biggest concern here, as playing without Anthony Davis definitely accounts for some of the rebounding deficiency, but the Lakers trailed by 21 at halftime, as they only had 45 points. 

The 3-point shooting is porous. Shooting 28% in any game is inexcusable, let alone one where you're playing a team where you should have matchup advantages on the perimeter. This hurts the Lakers offense beyond just a scoring standpoint, as actions, lanes, and the paint become clogged up when teams don't respect the 3-ball. 

Systematically, there's no identity. Teams like Denver and Golden State encourage a ton of off-ball movement and emphasize the 3-point shot. Dallas lets Luka Doncic operate their offense by himself and create for others. 

The Lakers have no delineating characteristic, approach, or practice on offense that gives them an advantage. Tracing back to the postseason last year, every loss seemed to be due to major offensive stagnation for large periods (if not the entirety) of games. That trend is continuing into this year, and is now coming into play more often than not.

There's no off-ball movement to attract defenders from the ball/wear them down and no movement shooting, forcing them to get set shots at all times. Having watched all 30 teams play at least once this season, this may be the worst offense I've seen.

The alarming lack of self-creation is also becoming a serious issue. Outside of LeBron, there's little to no reliable offensive output, as players like D'Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves are the epitome of inconsistency and struggle against better defenders. 

Taurean Prince, Cam Reddish, and Max Christie aren't people you can rely on to create shots, and while Rui Hachimura was productive today, he hasn't shown a long-term trend of being capable of creating down the stretch. 

First-round pick Jalen Hood Schifino is still a "few weeks" from returning. 

It's time for the Lakers to make a trade. Yesterday, I wrote this article that featured this line: 

As it is, the Lakers have the 17th-ranked offense, which is also heavily skewed up by their 130-point explosion against the Clippers. Outside of that, they're yet to break 110, which would be ranked around 20th in the league."

A 94-point performance now marks the 7th time in 8 games that the Lakers have not eclipsed 108 points. In the offensively-high powered Western Conference, that's not going to work. 

Things really have to change. Let's see if Rob Pelinka chooses to act. 

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