Most of the attention surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers goes towards the team’s superstars of Luka Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves. Whether it is positive or negative, they get the glory more often than not, and rightfully so. But this season has seen a number of role players have to step up, primarily due to injury.
The Lakers have barely had their full complement of players healthy this season and injuries, not only to the superstar trio, but to other rotation pieces, have forced others to step up. Players such as Jarred Vanderbilt, Maxi Kleber and Nick Smith Jr. have been thrust into big spots despite not seeing the court at other points of the season.
The constant lineup changes have made it tough for the Lakers and reserve big man Jaxson Hayes admitted that the Lakers haven’t been able to really find their identity so far this year.
“I feel like each team, you never truly find your full identity until honestly game like 70,” Hayes said. “It takes a full year to do that, especially since we’ve played two games with our full rotation. So it’s hard to find our team identity when we’re not playing everyone and we’re just switching the lineups each game. We just gotta keep playing hard and just do what we gotta do.”
Quite simply there are no excuses and the Lakers just have to do whatever is necessary to win. And Hayes believes this team has had many players step up when they’ve been called upon this season.
“Yeah, for sure. We’ve had a bunch of guys step up this year whenever we’ve needed them to and they’ve killed it,” Hayes added. “We just gotta keep it up.”
Hayes himself is only just returning from a minor injury and the only player on the Lakers to suit up every game is wing Jake LaRavia. In addition to Reaves being out for some time, Rui Hachimura and Gabe Vincent are also on the shelf and head coach JJ Redick is continuing to experiment with different rotations to try and find a solution to the Lakers’ struggles.
The Lakers have lost four of their last five games heading into the new year and all of their losses have been blowouts. If they plan on turning things around the Lakers will continue to need players like Hayes to step up and fill in the gaps as best they can.
JJ Redick believes Lakers are still trying to figure out their identity
Redick is also lamenting the team’s injuries and believes the team is still trying to figure out their identity this season in large part because of that.
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