Lakers Showing Signs Of Life After Terrible Start To 2014-15 Season

Lakers Showing Signs of Life After Terrible Start to 2014-15 Season
By Josh Martin, NBA Lead Writer Nov 20, 2014



Don't plan to attend a parade down Figueroa Street just yet, Los Angeles Lakers fans. Don't even sit on StubHub for seats at Staples Center beyond mid-April, unless you're eager to support the Los Angeles Clippers.

A 98-92 win over the Dwight Howard-less Houston Rockets won't bring another Larry O'Brien Trophy to L.A. Neither will a 114-109 victory against the Atlanta Hawks, sans DeMarre Carroll and a whole Al Horford.

But wins are wins, especially those that come on the road. And in a season clouded with misery and predictable disappointment, every little ray of sunshine counts.
The Rockets still have plenty going for them, despite the absence of the Lakers' newest nemesis, on account of a knee strain. James Harden, for one.

Harden had himself an evening that was at once typical of and unusual for such a prolific and aggressive scorer. The two-time All-Star scored 24 points on just 11 field-goal attempts, with a pair of threes, a slew of slashes and eight made free throws constituting his total.
Typical Harden, right? Not if you peek behind the box score.

Harden didn't register any points until a quarter-and-a-half had passed, and he didn't hit from the field until there were just over three minutes left until the break.

Of course, The Beard brushed by L.A.'s defense for 20 second-half points.

Just none when it really mattered. He put the Rockets up five with a 20-footer at 2:42 in the fourth quarter, but he failed to get back on the board as the Lakers ripped off a stunning 12-1 run.

What happened? Wesley Johnson happened.


Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Good Wes came out to play in the waning moments, hounding Harden on one end and hitting shots on the other. With the clock running under a minute, he picked Harden's pocket and finished an and-1 on the other end that gave the Lakers a 94-92 lead they wouldn't relinquish.
Two possessions later, he smothered the smooth-scoring swingman to the point of jacking up a desperate air ball from beyond the three-point line that wound up in Kobe Bryant's hands. Carlos Boozer noted the importance of Johnson's role to the team, per Serena Winters of Lakers Nation:
Carlos Boozer on Wes Johnson: "His role is incredibly important. He needs to get more love for that." (on TWC)

— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) November 20, 2014

Fitting, too, that Bryant would be the one to catch a tough, contested miss that all but sealed the game in the Lakers favor and the one that actually did. His night was full of misfires—20 all told, including those from the free-throw and three-point lines.

Heck, his evening was about as streaky as Harden's. Bryant opened the scoring with a three, then missed five straight shots...then nailed six in a row...then went on to miss seven consecutive field goals later on. Along the way, he took more than his fair share of maddeningly contested shots, including a few of the variety that had ESPN Insider Tom Haberstroh (subscription required) in such a fit:

Watching the Lakers play basketball this season, for the most part, has been a miserable experience. It's hardly team basketball. Flip over to a Lakers game and chances are you'll see four guys in purple-and-gold standing around watching Bryant build a house, brick-by-brick.
But just because it took Bryant 28 shots to pile up his 29 points doesn't mean he came up empty; far from it. He led all scorers with nine fourth-quarter points—one more than a certain swagtastic shooter.

Nick Young followed up a 17-point season debut in Atlanta with 16 more at the Toyota Center Wednesday night. It's way too soon to say he's the Lakers' savior...but they are 2-0 since he returned from a broken finger.

This, after a 1-9 start in which they looked like easily the league's worst team west of Philadelphia and, in some ways, its most hopeless over the long haul. Their defense had been scraping the bottom of the deepest barrel in the NBA for stops, ceding 113.4 points per 100 possessions, while allowing opponents to shoot a sizzling 48.5 percent from the floor.
The Rockets managed a mere 40.5 percent for themselves and were outrebounded 47-38 by the size-deprived Lakers, with Jordan Hill accounting for 16 points and 10 boards inside.

Granted, Houston didn't have Howard, whose forays around the rim—like those few he fit in before bowing out of the Rockets' season-opening blowout in L.A.—rank among the best ways to boost a squad's field-goal percentage on any given night. And the Lakers' struggles defending the three were as evident as ever, with Houston's trey-happy attack, hitting 15-of-38 (39.5 percent) from downtown.

But there's no point in poo-pooing improvement, however token.

Not after watching the Lakers cede at least 107 points on eight different occasions coming into the game. Not after suffering, sulking and slinking through an unbearable bundle of barrages that embarrassed this franchise and its coach, Byron Scott, who came into the campaign preaching purple-and-gold pride and physical defense. Not after wondering whether the sky was actually falling, or if those were just drops of real rain to soothe California's drought.

And certainly not after seeing the Lakers spread the wealth a bit, rather than wait for Bryant to either save or bury them, depending on the outcome of a contested shot late in the clock.
Four double-digit scorers in Houston. Five in Atlanta. Not coming from the end of the bench, benefiting only from the solemn, pointless opportunities with which crunch time is rife, especially in Lakerland.

Is it the Swaggy P Effect? Has Young's mere presence helped balance out Bryant's on-ball proclivities by providing the Black Mamba with a reliable scoring partner? Has he reinvigorated the Lakers' locker room with his trademark brand of San Fernando Valley-bred bravado?


David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Maybe. Maybe not. Well, probably not. But compared to a decrepit Carlos Boozer? A lost Jeremy Lin? A supporting cast stymied, at times, by the Mamba doing his thing? Young's not just a breath of fresh air; he's a freakin' gust of it. In true Young style, he defined his Swag, courtesy of Bleacher Report's Kevin Ding:

Swag, according to @NickSwagyPYoung: "I leave a presence. I'm like Michael Jackson, Prince, all those other guys."
— KEVIN DING (@KevinDing) November 20, 2014
It's all relative for the Lakers right now. They can talk all they want about championship aspirations and building toward the sport's biggest prize. They wouldn't be the Lakers if they didn't, and Kobe would not be Kobe if he didn't, wrote Ding:

So he has to answer the questions about making the playoffs by deflecting and saying it doesn't matter what he says about that because people aren't going to believe the Lakers will make it anyway. He might not rationally expect the Lakers are going to, but he has to operate as if they can.
It's all about process for these Lakers. Laying the foundation for their future. Establishing a system, an attitude, an approach, a culture under Scott into which the next Lakers—and the Lakers after that, and the Lakers after that—cannot only fit, but eventually also thrive.
As the famous Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once wrote, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."
Indeed, the Lakers look as though they're at least 1,000 metaphorical miles from hanging their 17th banner. And two wins in mid-November, amidst an 82-game schedule that ends on Tax Day in America, April 15, equate to little more than the pre-walk shuffles of an anxious infant on the Lakers' long road back to relevance.
Each bit counts, though, no matter how small, when there are only bits of solace to be found in the sea of uncertainty that surrounds the NBA's marquee team and its most polarizing living legend.
As Bryant put it after L.A.'s first win of the season, a 107-92 victory over the Charlotte Hornets: "You've got to start somewhere."
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.​

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...f-life-after-terrible-start-to-2014-15-season

 

Didnt read but after a loss like last nights I think its okay lol.

 

Don't read bleacher report, it's basically people pretending to be sports journalists

 

That sounds like ESPN without necessarily the Bron synchophany. Though I think of them as Soap Opera storyline writers mixed with TMZ.

 

Cool stories 101 haha.