Every week during the 2020-21 NBA season, we are going to look deeper into three of the league’s biggest storylines to determine if the trends are more grounded or fiction is moving forward.
[Last week: Draymond Green’s double standard, the struggling Celtics and NBA Top Shot]
The Los Angeles Lakers are in trouble
The Lakers have lost four of their last five games and five of their last six, from a game behind Western Conference front-runner Utah Jazz to a game at the Phoenix Suns in fourth place. Three of the losses occur with double digits. The stretch coincides with Anthony Davis’ aggravation of his right Achilles tribe in the first of it.
So we must not really worry about the Lakers, right? As long as Davis is healthy again through the playoffs, he and LeBron James should be the NBA’s most dominant team, but LA should still be the favorite to repeat as champions.
But …
Achilles strains are no joke. We know what became of Kevin Durant’s Achilles strain in the 2019 playoffs, which gives the Lakers every reason not to chase Davis back until he is completely healthy. The variance for Achilles injuries is large. Aaron Gordon, forward of Orlando Magic, missed two games with Achilles last season, returned for four and rested one more before re-joining the team regularly. Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love has yet to play with a more serious Achilles team in the preseason this season. Davis is closer to Love in that spectrum.
Meanwhile, his injury simply exposes the problems that masked his dominance, placing a greater burden on his running mates.
The Lakers adjusted their center rotation and swapped Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee for Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell. On paper, it was an upgrade. In practice, this made the Lakers less vertical threat. With almost 40% of their shots on the sidelines, the Lakers finished second last season, per Cleanup of the Glass. They are eighth this season, closer to 36%. Similarly, they saw their ranking in the opponents’ field goal percentage on the edge from fifth last season (61%) to 17th this season (63.4%). Their margin of error was conquered.
Their defense as a whole is still at the top of the league, which is another positive sign for the playoffs, but their offense has slipped from 11th last season to 17th this year. That should change when games are more meaningful, like last season when their offense was first place among the last eight teams, because James and Davis are just a deadly combination and the Lakers have the rest of this regular season around the floor of Gasol to maximize. spacing around them.
It could just be that the Lakers are finally experiencing the same problems that plagued so many other teams this season. They have lost fewer games due to injuries and health protocols than the majority of the league, but starting point guard Dennis Schroder has also missed the past four games after his possible exposure to COVID-19. The Lakers have no one else but James who constantly creates for others. The release of beloved teammate Quinn Cook this week indicates they are getting ready to address one of their deepest concerns.
All of this put extraordinary pressure on James, who played every game at the age of 36 and exceeded 40 minutes in four of his last ten minutes. The second half of the season is going to be more crunchy, especially if Davis’ absence extends beyond the length of time the Lakers initially offered. James may be superhuman, and he’s chasing his fifth MVP award, but is it really worth taxing him to improve the team’s position in the West?
With the Jazz extending their lead over the conference and facing one of the easiest remaining schedules, it may be better for the Lakers to finish fourth or fifth in the West. From a similar point of view, the second place Clippers still pose a greater threat to their repetition. (Who on the Jazz defends James and Davis?) Avoiding a LA rivalry in the second round in the hopes that another team will take them out, like last year, is probably a better strategy.
That being said, nothing can ultimately make a difference. Aside from any limitation from James and Davis, the Lakers are preferred to win every series they enter in the playoffs, and concerns about slimmer margins and depth will be condemned.
Determination: Fiction
The Orlando Magic must offer a fire sale
No team has been hit harder this season by injuries than the Magic, and it’s not close. Two of their most important building blocks – Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac – are out for the season with torn ACLs. Newcomer Cole Anthony (rib) is sidelined by the All-Star break, and Aaron Gordon (ankle) is in the middle of a four to six-week recovery.
All of this leads to the March 25 deadline.
Orlando has somehow won four of their last seven games, including Dwayne Bacon, Gary Clark, James Ennis and Michael Carter-Williams around All-Star center Nikola Vucevic. They have just two wins of a spot in the play-in tournament and a chance at a third straight playoff game. It’s smoke and mirrors. Orlando is defeated by 6.4 points per 100 possessions, working essentially as the third worst team in the entire league.
This is what they would like to be. It’s a stacked concept with three or four potential franchise-changing prospects. The Magic knows all too well what it’s like to choose beyond a concept’s download point. They missed Joel Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis, De’Aaron Fox and Trae Young through 2014 picks. The one time they had a top-three pick in the last decade, they got Victor Oladipo. (And gave him up too soon – a story for another day.)
Orlando is a lost cause. Though healthy, the Magic were nothing more than first-round contenders since the Eastern Conference final in 2010, when an overall no. 1 (Dwight Howard) made his last place for them. How many of the players’ current players will be there if the team threatens to advance to the third round again?
The list goes no further than Fultz, Isaac, Anthony and perhaps Chuma Okeke, their first round pick from 2019 who missed an ACL injury last season. Of course, they have to hold a fire auction. Evan Fournier’s agreement expires. Get what you can while you can. Gordon is in his seventh season on the Magic. Time to cut bait. Terrence Ross is signed until 2023. Take what you can get. Mo Bamba, the sixth overall pick from 2018, plays less than ten minutes per game. Give him a chance, or take out some value before it’s painfully obvious that you’ve given him up.
The largest fish is Vucevic. The 30-year-old enjoys a career-statistics year (24.1 points on 48/40/84 shooting, 11.7 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game) in the gap left by an exhausted position. After this one he has two years left. No one wants to swap their best player, but what’s the Magic’s ceiling with him in that role? Where will he be if they develop or sign someone better? He may never hold more value than at present. If it’s waiting until the summer to get the best pick for him, it’s but, it’s over time to blow up the Magic.
Believe in the Wizards again
At the start of the season, I scored the Wizards one of the East’s eighth playoff spots. Two weeks ago, they were 6-17, owners of the fewest wins in the NBA and the worst record of their conference. All-Star guard Bradley Beal was ‘damn tired’ of carrying them even that far. He also had no plans to repair the ship in Washington.
Since then, they are 6-1, better than anyone except the rising Brooklyn Nets. It’s not a soft 6-1. Their lone loss comes again against the Clippers. They beat the Nuggets twice, along with the Lakers (though without Davis), Celtics, Blazers and Rockets. Washington jumped three teams in the standings and put two games off a playoff spot with only one loss more than the Toronto Raptors in fifth place. A play area is still very much on the table.
Beal’s 32.8 points per game still leads to the league’s leaderboard. Russell Westbrook has more assistants than anyone in the NBA over Washington’s recent series, averaging 19-11-11 despite a horrific shooting (44/8/50 split, fortunately on just two three-point attempts per match). They are trying to defend. This is at least a semblance of the partnership we thought, because how could two talents of the entire NBA caliber not be able to lead a team to the playoffs in the East?
And there is room to grow. The improvement coincided with a shift in the starting lineup. A season end to Thomas Bryant and failed experiments with Robin Lopez and Alex Len gave Moe Wagner a chance to start at center. The threat of his shooting here or there opens half a step for Beal and Westbrook to attack the basket. The same goes for undefeated second-year guard Garrison Matthews, who shot 43.8% on four tries per night in the first eight starts of his career. The defense was not a disaster either, and the Wizards no longer dig early holes.
Davis Bertans, who was on fire from afar, opened the floor just a little further for everyone. Rui Hachimura’s midfield play took advantage of the space previously cluttered by sharing the court with several non-shooting threats. Lopez has switched to a specialist role in reserve defense, especially if they stop at crunch time and need veteran stewardship. Somehow, Wizards coach Scott Brooks has finally found a rotation that makes at least some sense.
None of that is great, but as for the playoffs, the Wizards have a path they can now believe in.
– – – – – – –
Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. A tip? Send an email to [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
More from Yahoo Sports: