It has been a rollercoaster season thus far for the Los Angeles Lakers. They’ve undergone winning streaks, horrible losses and significant lineup changes due to injury or poor performance. Only three players — LeBron James, Dalton Knecht and Gabe Vincent — have played in all 22 games in 2024-25.
But on Thursday morning, they sit at easily their lowest point of the rollercoaster. They are 2-6 in their last eight games and are coming off of back-to-back embarrassing losses. They lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves 109-80 and followed that up with an even worse loss to the Miami Heat by a score of 134-93. That’s two losses by a combined 70 points with an average score of 86.5.
So when Vincent was asked about the group’s togetherness and how things have looked for L.A. in the midst of the losses, it wasn’t surprising to hear his gauge of where the Lakers are at, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“I think we’re definitely far off from where we want to be and where we expect to be this time of the year. But obviously there’s a lot of season left and one more game on this road trip so hopefully we can get together and figure it out.”
After a loss like the Heat one on Wednesday night, Vincent had a tough time even pinning down specific issues, as just about everything was bad from L.A.:
“I think defensively, I don’t know what we gave up, 134 points, that’s a lot of points to give up. A lot of lapses there. A lot of turnovers, I don’t know how many we had, 13 turnovers but I think they scored on every turnover we had. So defensively we gotta be way better. It’s gonna be hard to win games giving up 134 points to anybody, you know what I’m saying? We gotta be better.”
And when Vincent described the vibe in the locker room, it didn’t take many words to get the point across:
“Upset. That’s how I’d characterize it.”
No one on the Lakers roster or coaching staff seems to be happy with how things are going in the last stretch of games. They all know that something needs to be fixed, and quickly. As a crowded Western Conference will be unforgiving to a lengthy losing streak.
LeBron James puts Lakers’ struggles on players, not coaches
The Lakers have already had some bad losses this season. Seven of their 10 losses in the 2024-25 campaign thus far have been by double digits and five of them have been by more than 20 points. LeBron James and Anthony Davis, normally superstars, have both looked ordinary at times already this year.
After the most recent loss to the Heat, LeBron said the effort level against the Heat was embarrassing and that no schematic adjustments could have fixed it.
The Lakers star also did not want the coaching staff to take any blame for a loss like that either. He made sure to say that it’s the players that need to figure things out.
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