The Los Angeles Lakers have made it to the halfway point of the 2024-25 season. And so far, they have been a difficult team to evaluate. Superstars LeBron James and Anthony Davis have looked the part and have been largely available. Austin Reaves has ascended to third star status. General manager Rob Pelinka made his first trade in nearly two years to improve the balance of the roster.
But it would be impossible to say that, through 41 games, the Lakers are championship contenders. They are 23-18, good enough for a fifth place tie in the Western Conference. However, they are one of just three teams in the league to have an above .500 record and a negative point differential. And they have struggled against the league’s better teams in one-off matchups.
So as Davis went to evaluate the Lakers’ first 41 games, he knew that the major thing was the consistency that the team needs to start having regardless of opponent.
“Just approaching each game with professionalism, no matter who we’re playing,” Davis said. “Obviously, this is a struggling team, and then Thursday, we play one of the best teams in the league, so we’ve got to have the same approach of coming out and doing what we’re supposed to do. I think if we can just find that consistency of having the right mindset coming into each game, we’ll be okay.”
On L.A.’s struggles versus the league’s best, Davis believes that much of it comes down to the Lakers playing more careful and not creating easy opportunities for other teams.
“We just can’t make mistakes against those teams, or they’ll make us pay. They’ll capitalize on each possession,” Davis admitted. “So we can’t beat ourselves. And a lot of times, we beat ourselves. We get away with it against the bad teams. But teams like that, like the Boston Celtics, you make a mistake, and they are going to make you pay.”
On the flip side, the Lakers have to be able to get wins whenever they can, and that means playing their best even against the teams at the bottom of the standings. They did this on Tuesday night against the Washington Wizards and earned some praise from head coach JJ Redick.
“Just like (JJ Redick) said, just try to come out and be professional obviously. The team (Washington) is struggling all year, so we didn’t want them to come in and give them life. We kind of just wanted to play our style of basketball on both ends of the floor. We kind of put them away early. They made shots and everybody makes shots against us, but I think we did a good job of maintaining our competitiveness and our professionalism to go out and win this game.”
The Lakers have 41 more games in the regular season. Off the court, the front office needs to see what, if any, improvements they can make to vault them into championship contention. And on the court, they need to find a greater balance and night-to-night consistency so they can maintain their place outside of the Play-In Tournament in the West’s top six.
Jarred Vanderbilt cleared to debut for Lakers this season
One way the Lakers can improve is getting some of their injured players back. The biggest of these is forward Jarred Vanderbilt. Injuries have held him out of most of the last 1.5 seasons, but he is finally cleared to return to the lineup this Saturday against the Golden State Warriors.
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