Editor’s note: This is the Monday, Oct. 31 edition of the Purple & Bold Lakers newsletter from reporter Kyle Goon. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
LOS ANGELES — Water cooler baths. Standing ovations. Steamers cascading from the arena ceiling. It was hard not to get caught up in the Lakers’ first win of the season.
Darvin Ham’s deep baritone crackled with emotion as he monologued on how his players persevered through the winless start. Anthony Davis’ shoes squeaked as he walked off the podium, drenched with the water the team had poured on Ham in celebration. Russell Westbrook described his in-game joy – a word very few have used to talk about his Lakers tenure until now (except for its absence).
And yet … it’s one win. The Lakers still find themselves as of Monday morning staring up at most of the league in the standings, with games against New Orleans (4-2), Utah (5-2) and Cleveland (5-1) directly ahead.
While it would be uncouth to pour cold water (so to speak) on the Lakers’ Sunday night breakthrough against Denver, perhaps it is wise to step back and take a look at the bigger picture as the team tries to string a few wins together. The three notable big-picture questions for the Lakers:
1. Is Sixth Man Russ sustainable?
The play of Westbrook in his first two games off the bench has been undeniable. Excuse the small sample size for a moment, but in his first three games as a starter, he averaged 10.3 points, 4.3 assists and 6.7 rebounds on 28.9% shooting. In two games as a reserve, he’s averaging 18 points, 5.5 assists and 8 rebounds on 41.4% shooting. Starter Russ was a minus-16. Sixth Man Russ is plus-18.
It’s not just numbers. Sixth Man Russ has looked different as well: decisive, athletic, free. On Sunday, he was hamming it up for the crowd with a shoulder shimmy or by rocking the baby. He looks like a different player – or perhaps more pointedly, like the player he once was.
“The way he played in Minnesota, the way he played tonight is unbelievable,” Davis said of Westbrook. “To be a player of his caliber and ask to come off the bench, that’s truly a guy who’s doing whatever the team asks to get a win. Sacrifice his starting position for the betterment of the team. He’s flourished in that role.”
It’s a little murky, however, how precisely Westbrook feels about what Ham has euphemistically called a “realignment.” He would evidently rather start, and at times he doesn’t see why the way he plays wouldn’t translate back into the starting lineup. After the Minnesota game, Westbrook said it was tough to sacrifice in a loss: “It’s difficult, especially playing and doing things I know I could be able to help our guys.”
Whatever the exact reason, coming off the bench seems to have flipped a switch in the mercurial point guard, giving him a pass to play more like himself (a season removed from him shooting down that his teammates meant it when they said “Let Russ be Russ”). He’s playing at an up-tempo pace, making better decisions, and playing a lot more like the two-way wrecking ball that Ham foresaw.
“It’s tailor-made, in my opinion, for our group, as it’s built, for him to be in that role and then gain his rhythm,” Ham said. “And then now LeBron and A.D., our starters come back on the floor, he’s in a good mood, he’s in a good mix because he’s playing and competing at a very high level. And our guys see that once they sit down and say, ‘OK, he’s taking it up a notch so I can’t come back in and be the one to come in and ruin it.’”
What can ruin this arrangement? Two things: Westbrook himself, or if the team can’t translate his performances into wins. If he continues to thrive as a sixth man and the Lakers continue to win, it seems natural that he would eventually settle into a groove. But if things don’t keep moving around in the right direction for the Lakers, it’s hard to imagine Westbrook feeling satisfied coming off the bench for a losing squad.
2. Can Davis play through pain?
It was hard to know whether to celebrate or despair: With 2:12 remaining, Davis made a critical tip-in that put the Lakers ahead by nine … but then immediately grabbed his back, his face a scowl of agony.
Watching Davis’ pain was a game-long odyssey. He was sinking shots as well as ever, going 10 for 18, but he was undeniably slow running up and down the court, and he couldn’t stop wincing whenever he made a move that aggravated the area.
It’s not clear what Davis’ injury is. The team has described it as tightness and soreness. Ham said the injury can’t get worse, that Davis merely has to tolerate the pain. But it sure looked painful, and it’s clearly affecting aspects of his game, including his general quickness and agility.
“One day feel great and the next days I feel all right,” he said. “So, just try to see what happens, try to manage it and keep getting treatment and relaxing and do everything that the trainers and the doctors told me to do to kind of be tolerable to go out there and play.”
That’s not what you want to be hearing from a franchise big man just six games into the season, especially when Davis’ goal was to grit out injuries and play the whole year. He has punishing matchups coming up, including against Zion Williamson/Jonas Valanciunas and Jarrett Allen. Can he hold up?
If there’s a positive to take from it, it’s that Davis said he’s in a “great space mentally” just a few days after both Westbrook and James indicated that he had to take care of his mind. Ham said Davis’ toughness was inspiring to his teammates.
“I looked at him and I asked him (if he was coming out) and he was like, ‘No. Hell no,’” Ham recounted. “He said, ‘I got you. I got you. I’m with you.’ All the guys kept telling me that. ‘We with you. We with you.’ The guys believe.”
Lakers fans have to hope that Davis’ toughness can outweigh his pain, especially in the coming stretch.
3. What are the Lakers’ alternate roster options?
As is the norm in Lakerland, the joy of finally winning a game didn’t even last 24 hours without being impeded upon by outside drama. On Monday morning, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski posted a podcast in which he asked Indiana’s Myles Turner, point blank, if the Lakers should trade two first-round picks for him and Buddy Hield (whom they’ve been linked to for months).
“If I’m the Lakers, I take a very hard look at this with the position that you’re in,” Turner said. “I know what I can provide for a team.”
Hard to believe we’re already seeing a player for another team publicly campaigning for the Lakers to trade for him less than one-10th of the way through the season, but here it is. And Turner is hardly the only one – there’s a huge swath of fans who, before Sunday, were firmly supportive of moving on from Westbrook, which is why Turner and Hield trend on social media every time the Lakers lose.
As of early Monday, Hield had played in seven games (17.1 ppg, 3.7 apg, 44.6% 3-point shooting) and Turner had played in just two (16 ppg, 8 rpg, 4.5 bpg, 38.1% FG shooting). While Turner said he was happy to continue playing in Indiana, he admitted he finds L.A. appealing.
“Just playing in the bigger market, I just feel like here in the Midwest we don’t get the love that I think we deserve. It doesn’t get taken on the national level,” he said. “You are under the microscope out there at the West, when you are doing bad you going to hear about it. When you are doing great you are going to get a lot of love, especially with the love that the Lakers get. I think that another aspect is playing with greatness and playing under LeBron, I feel like he demands a certain level of excellency, especially at this point of his career. It’s just one of those things, when you are out there, you gotta perform.”
As reported in this space several times, the Lakers are still looking to trade Westbrook, hoping he builds his trade value (which he might finally be doing). The sticking point in any trade remains the draft equity: The Lakers don’t want to part with their first-round picks in 2027 and 2029 without the assurance that they’ll contend with whatever they receive in return.
It will be interesting to watch exactly how successful Sixth Man Russ is with the team. There’s a blurred line between having enough success to bump up Westbrook’s trade value, and having the kind of success that makes the Lakers believe they should simply go forward with what they’ve got.
If they can become a playoff team with the pieces in house without having to trade their future, that might be the best of all worlds.
Of course, 1-5 is a long way from a playoff team, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
It’s also worth noting that one big option for the Lakers now feels totally off the table: It was common knowledge this summer that the team was interested in trading for Kyrie Irving, who is playing on an expiring deal for the Brooklyn Nets. That could have still been a route this summer if the Lakers preserved salary cap space and Irving became a free agent, giving incentive to simply letting Westbrook play out his contract.
But how can you bring in a player embroiled with accusations of antisemitism? The weekend showed Irving, ever a wild card, seemingly unapologetic after the latest of several controversial incidents: sharing a book and movie that have been widely decried as hateful toward Jews. Irving’s future with the Nets seems pretty bleak, and perhaps his future in the league is in jeopardy as well given that he is making himself radioactive with off-court decisions.
That limits the Lakers’ pool of options moving forward, either in the trade market or in next summer’s free agency. Even a franchise willing to take risks on unpredictable stars can’t afford to take this chance.
– Kyle Goon
Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the Purple & Bold Lakers newsletter from reporter Kyle Goon. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
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