5 THINGS

Look it’s going to be easy to kick the team while it’s down 2 superstars. Put any basketball team in the same boat and watch it sink. You take Dame and CJ off Portland? Sunk. Tatum and Brown off Boston? More sunk than they are. And on and on. The Lakers are going to have to fight and scrap for every win they can get. Today’s fiver is how some key players can do just that. It’s a race a against time right now, we need to tread enough water to stay relevant until we get Davis and James back. But those clock-hands keep on spinning…

1. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Dude, where to begin? You’re shooting has fallen off a cliff, you don’t do much with the basketball when you get it and you don’t really ever try to force your own action. In theory KCP is our 3rd option on the starting unit. In reality he’s now become almost an after-thought. If you listen to Bill and Stu on Spectrum they now routinely ask the question, flippantly but pointedly, when KCP will take his first shot. That has to stop and the team will be better for it, both now and on down the line. The drives to the rim off shoulder curls are gone. The side-step threes are gone. The pump and go’s are gone. They all need to come back. Otherwise I’d start giving his minutes to literally any other player on the roster.
2. Talen Horton-Tucker. We don’t need THT to replace what LeBron brings and it looked he was trying to do that last night. We need him to be the efficient scorer he’s shown he can be when he slows down on and focuses on each possession. What we really need for him is to diversify his offensive attack: he was 6-16 from the floor, but 0-2 from three. You gotta take threes to make threes. The good thing is he was able to get the kind of contact that generates trips to the stripe, which is another thing this team will need to excel at during this stretch. We need THT to better anchor the bench scoring if Kuzma is going to start.
3. Kyle Kuzma, same thing. We don’t need Kuz to become a superstar overnight but dig down and find the best execution you can deliver on a consistent basis. Kuzma didn’t have an accurate game last night but you have to give him credit for trying as hard as he did. Other vets didn’t put forth that amount of energy and it showed in the results. More on that in a second. Kyle just needs to do what he’s been doing which has been filling in the gaps. We don’t need you to drop 25 ppg out of nowhere, just stay steady and elevate the things you’re already doing well.
4. The starting 5. When 3 out of 5 starters amass a total of 9 points, 10 rebounds (thanks almost exclusively to ‘Kieff in that department) and 4 assists while going 1-9 from three…it’s a problem Kyle and Schroder can’t fix. The trio of Wes Matthews, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Markieff Morris are NBA veterans and should be better. They cannot turn in performances like this anymore if we are to have any hope at all of keeping pace in the west. Even when AD comes back if this is all we get it’s just not enough. Play with some *@%#ing pride gentlemen.
5. The bright spot? One Montrezl Harrell. Honestly he was it for me, I wasn’t overly pleased with Schroder or Caruso as the PGs but they at least performed up the baseline of their roles. Trezz shined and we’ll need him to keep shining. If he keeps at it he should be inline for a big payday from someone, if not us. In all honesty I would pay Trezz before I paid Schroder at this point. You know what you’re getting from Harrell night in and night out, he’s consistent in his energy and his effort. I can’t say the same for almost anyone else on the team. Pay the man, somebody, he’s earned it.

If the Lakers swing a big trade I’ll be surprised. The hard cap issues are going to make it nigh impossible to maintain the roster size required by the NBA. Just about every trade proposal I see here puts up against the hard cap and once there you cannot add salary. The NBA will not allow teams to carry fewer than 14 players. The best option I see to pull off a big trade is to trade a player like KCP, Schroder or Trezz into Boston’s room exception they have from the Hayward trade. That would free up the space to make a trade and fill the remaining roster spots w/ vet minimum deals. In all honesty, it may come to just that.