The Russell Westbrook experiment will haunt the Lakers and LeBron James for years to come, let’s see what went wrong after they landed the $44 million man.
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The Los Angeles Lakers did nothing right last season from start to end. Instead of trading for a few pieces to strengthen the squad, they traded almost the entire roster for the 2020-21 season to form the Big-3 of Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis and LeBron James.
Not realizing the fact like a few more teams that squad depth with two superstars would have been a much better option which did win them a championship in 2020, they traded away Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Montrezl Harrell for the 9x All-Star.
They also let Alex Caruso walk for free to create the cap space for Brodie. The result? The Lakers suffered enormously on all parts of the ball game. Adding ages of the players and injuries of the squad to that equation, they ended up missing the Play-in tournament even after having the best odds to finish at the top of the Western Conference before the season kicked off.
But one of the biggest reasons for their failure that separated itself from the rest was the 2017 MVP’s colossal dip in form that saw him have his worst season in 12 years.
Russell Westbrook and his layups stood in between the Lakers finishing as the second-best team in the NBA
A drop in numbers was always on the cards for Russ once he decided to join Bron and AD, but his inefficiency made that fall way much bigger than anybody would’ve expected, especially James, who was pretty confident of making it a point to shut the noise against his old squad before the season took off.
NBA Twitter has an interesting theory about the man who missed the most buckets in and around the rim throughout the regular season campaign.
I have statistical evidence to prove the Lakers would’ve been the 2nd seed if Russ made half the layups he missed. pic.twitter.com/YcMiTNuY7B
— ⁶ (@OVOLakeShow) June 26, 2022
Let’s simply assume Russ made HALF of these total layups, which would give him an ADDITIONAL 280 POINTS (140 layups) pic.twitter.com/n4uhdSrNtx
— ⁶ (@OVOLakeShow) June 26, 2022
284 total margin of defeat divided by total number of losses (unknown) = 11.51 points per loss
Unknown is 24.67 = 25 losses.
The Lakers would have a 57-25 record, good enough for 2nd in the West and 2nd best record in the league. pic.twitter.com/Kn1huK0BB3
— ⁶ (@OVOLakeShow) June 26, 2022
Conclusion: This is obviously satire, however it goes to show the importance of my personal opinion how the missed layups at the rim were always a bigger issue than the turnovers this season.
End of thread. pic.twitter.com/dnEwOi2Vr6
— ⁶ (@OVOLakeShow) June 26, 2022
Had he really converted half of what he missed around the rim, it would have been his career-best season efficiency-wise. So, that probably brings an end to this theory.
