WMC 20-21: Whine, Moan And Complain... You Know You Want To

Injuries are why we are 15-20. Just not our year. Not surprised by our record. Could be worse.

 

Injury gods making up for last year’s opposite lack of them. We still have a puncher’s chance if we can get healthy and stay that way in the playoffs. Tall order. REALLY need to avoid Clippers in opening round.

 

First time I’ve felt that we are in legitimate jeopardy of not repeating. We’d have to turn on a pretty big switch to make it happen.

 

Lebron is the best player in the league for a reason .

Would be curious to know his cumulative teams record without him for his entire career

 

Cav's went 4-23 or .174 career without him.
Heat went 9-9 that's .500 career with Wade and Bosh
Lakers are 19-33 career without him that's .365 total to be fair we didn't have AD for 8 of those losses we've gone 8-12 without both which isn't all that bad considering.

That's 32-65 or .329(edited) career wins for LBJ's teams where LBJ didn't play at all. It's probably worse as this doesn't show games in which he played limited minutes for going out due to injury or whatever reason.

 

my wmc is i turned on the game in the 3rd, so i got to see probably the worst 8 minutes of the game before i turned it off. when westbrook basically soccer dribbled the ball all the way down the floor only to have it miraculously bounce off one of our guys and out of bounds, i knew it definitely wasn't our night.

anyway, not sure why the concern from everyone. we just got AD back and are playing lineups that haven't seen the floor together much or at all. also, we were missing the game's best player and lebron.

all that said, it's likely too late for us to develop the kind of chemistry required to win it all, so folks might have to get used to the idea. but we're a lot better than that game, for sure.

 

This just shows how Lebron is an MVP. We were treading water with him and no AD, but we are playing much wose with AD and not him. We would have won that Atlanta game if Lebron had not left the game. These missed open shots are ridiculous.If we can't hit open shots, forget about coming close to repeating.

 

Thanks so his teams are winning 36% of its games without him ... Yikes

 

Who among us who've grown to love this laker era of toughness and defense combined with individual brilliance on offense doesn't like to watch the Andre Drummond and Ben Mclemore show? They totally bring on defense

 

i've been perplexed by the drummond thing since before he came here, and mclemore was definitely an "appease klutch/lebron" thing. those guys are sacramento kings/charlotte bobcats, imo.

 

Lakers really do look snake bit this year. I mean even outside the lebron/Ad, it's basically sucked
-Morris seems to get it going: boom ankle injury
-KCP seems to get it going: boom ankle injury
-AC has a career game: boom he gets back spasms
-Even Kuzma has been dealing with a calf sprain
-Hedgehog clearly has been playing hurt several times

I think it's no coincidence the final 4 from last year just look beat up this year. The toll of the bubble combined with this short turnaround may have not impacted the league on average (I mean some teams didn' play forever) but LAL, Miami, Den, Boston look tired and beaten down this whole year.

That being said the core of the team is still around so I don't think they have that big of a learning curve particularly when Drummonds minutes can be cut back (i.e. AD at the 5) and guys like McClemore are replaced hopefully with healthy versions of AC/KCP. I mean there is no way in hell that 4 quarter run happens with Lebron and AC available

 

yeah, no reason we can't put up some serious fights in the playoffs. i just think everyone's banged up and we're likely to see more of it. you can't win it every year. all you can ask is to be competitive.

 

Yeah that's my biggest fear--that injury-plagued teams don't win championships even if everyone is back before playoffs. Take Lakers '04 for example.

At the same time there's still hope, and if we're lucky enough to get good matchups early on, I still think we have a fighting chance.

 

Hard to judge this Team without LeBron, but we could be making an early Playoff exit if we continue to play like this...

 

You hit the nail on the head! I am resigned myself to that as well. We may not win it, just be competitive. With a full offseason, we will be better next year.

 

i just think we won last year in part due to good chemistry/whole-greater-than-sum-of-parts. we pretty much lost any chance at that this year, so we have to rely fully on luck and pure talent. both of those things matter every year, but last year we had all three.

 

don't think it's any coincidence that so many of our guys have gotten hurt following the historically short offseason

hell, look at how many big names around the league have suffered serious injuries. NBA really dropped the ball on that one

 

NBA has been having issues with injuries for a while now. Last year just exasperated it more. Players nowadays use so much more torque and explosiveness. They jump hard, land hard, dribble hard. They are weak minded as well so that plays a part.