Didn't they also lose DeMarre Carrol?
Mike
They lost him before last season. They obviously took a bit of a tumble then, but he wouldn't explain their very poor performance the last few weeks.
I think the Hawks surprised teams at the beginning of the year but then fell off the cliff. It's a long year, The Lakers seemed to have come back earth as well. The Knicks seem to have steadied their ship and could be dangerous in the playoffs.
The Lakers coming back to earth seems to have largely coincided with them missing their best player.
yep. Russell had a 2 week timeframe. Randle also missed 1 or 2 games, and Nick Young got hurt last week too I think. They're still one of my favorite young cores in the NBA, and I think they'll get back to winning once they're healthy again.
Lakers were 7-6 with Russell and played a pretty easy schedule in those games (just 5 teams above .500 and 1 right at .500, the other 7 are all well below .500 including all 5 of the worst teams in the west and the nets from the east).
I'm not really sure what you are trying to argue here. Russell is a good player for them and a starter. They lost him. They are a worse team without him (not to mention losing randle for a few games and being without Nick Young for 5 games who is having a really nice year 46% from field 41% from 3). Which part are you disagreeing with? Are you saying they are better without him somehow?
You honestly make more "generally arguing with nothing" posts than anyone on this forum. Someone could post water is wet and you would make a reply saying "well not in all forms"
Yes Russell is a good player, but the Lakers also played a very easy schedule. The Lakers opponents in the games Russell has missed are San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Golden State, Golden State, Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Toronto, and Memphis. 5 of those games were on the road including the 4 most recent. Aside from New Orleans, Atlanta at 10-11 is the worst team in that group. The Lakers went 3-6 in those games and there is a good chance that with Russell they still go 3-6. They actually beat the Thunder without Russell and got demolished by the Thunder with Russell so who knows what happens if they have Russell for that second game (they actually beat the Bulls without Russell and lost to them with him as well - the reverse of GS who they somehow beat early in the year though got crushed in the two recent games). The only close loss during the games without Russell was their most recent game against the Grizzlies so maybe they win that one with Russell.
Thus, my point is, the Lakers were "overachieving" because they played an easy schedule. Once the schedule got harder they were always going to lose whether Russell was playing or not. Sure he might make a difference in a game here or there, but when a bad team starts consistently playing playoff teams, the bad team will start consistently losing. For the record, their schedule gets a lot easier and I wouldn't be surprised to see them hover around .500 for awhile. They have Utah and Houston in the next two but after that get Phoenix, New York, Sacto, Brooklyn, and Philly so they could easily go 4-1 in that stretch and maybe they split Houston and Utah and end up above .500 before they get another tough stretch.
Do you not realize the impact of not only missing Russell but also missing another key guard?
You can spin around some games to make anything sound reasonable. They played 13 games to start 7-6, 7 of them were on the road. Some of them were easy games, some of them were good wins (atlanta, golden state, houston) some were easier. They have certainly played other tougher games since then (including warriors twice).
That being said you watch enough basketball to know taking out two keys rotation players and probably their best player is going to make them significantly worse. Saying they would have had the same record without those two guys when they are now playing Marcelas 15-18 minutes a game in their place and they are now starting Metta World Peace! (The guy they pushed to be a coach before the season) is just flat out silly.
Do they still lose by 3 points to Memphis without playing the Marcelas serious minutes?
Do they still lose by 6 to Utah with Young and Russell instead of World Peace and Marcelas Huertas?
Maybe they don't get blown out by the pelicans with those guys playing?
I get that every team has injuries but it is pretty predictable that when a team loses to two starters or multiple rotation players it can really mess them up. To act like this isn't a major factor and blame it all on scheduling is silly.