It's Friday, and that means it's time for 10 more NBA things I like and dislike! This week, we highlight a single play that could, sort of, maybe save the Los Angeles Lakers, an NBA MVP as volleyball star and a hero's tribute to fashion icon Jarrett Allen.
1. The play that can (not really, but let's be nice) save the Lakers season
It's not great that 75% through a dispiriting Lakers season, I jolt out of my seat whenever I see this -- the same reaction I might have if I spotted a tiger outside my office window:
It was not hard to predict Russell Westbrook would be an awkward-to-disastrous fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis -- and erase the idea of playing traditional centers. As I wrote upon the trade, if James is the best shooter in some core lineups, you've done a bad job building a team around James. Westbrook isn't the typical non-shooting point guard, either. He's a non-shooting point guard who shoots all the time.
Westbrook needed to tweak his game, and the easiest tweak was setting ball screens for James. Everyone within the team knew this over the summer. When it became a talking point after the Lakers' 0-2 start, Westbrook set eight ball screens in the next game -- the most he has set in any game since Second Spectrum set up video tracking in 2013.
He has not set more than two in any game since. Westbrook screening more is not on its own turning this sub-.500 mess into a title team. Duh. But it would help, and that it hasn't happened is an organizational failure.
A lot of the media -- this writer included -- is guilty of underestimating how difficult it is getting stars to change how they play. It's hard for successful people in any profession to hear, You're not good enough anymore to do what you've always done. Good luck convincing the triple-double king to become some hybrid of Bruce Brown and Draymond Green. The Lakers have at times gone the other way, encouraging Westbrook to "be Russ" in an effort to buoy his confidence.
But Westbrook has the explosiveness, vision, and creativity to average 20 points and 8 assists in that Draymond-style role -- provided he could still "be Russ" when James rests.
Buckle up. Either the Lakers are squeaking through the play-in back door -- they have almost 0% chance of cracking the top six -- and reminding us any team with James and Davis is scary, or limping into a perilous summer.