The Los Angeles Lakers lost again on Tuesday night, falling to the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks, 131-116. It was the latest in what has been a brutal season in L.A. — the team trailed by 30 points in the second half, tried to rally back, got the deficit down to 10, and then ran out of gas. Now, the team is 26-29 on the season, which puts them in ninth place in the Western Conference.
For a team that comes into every season with championship aspirations, it’s a five-alarm fire when the Lakers find themselves 4.5 games back of an automatic playoff berth and firmly entrenched in a play-in spot as of today. There are plenty of reasons why they’re in that spot, but one has been that offseason acquisition Russell Westbrook just has not worked out the way they had hoped when they acquired him. On Tuesday, Westbrook scored 10 points on 3-for-11 shooting with 10 rebounds and five assists, but watched the final 15 minutes of the game from the bench and was on the receiving end of boos from Lakers fans.
Seeing as how the team gave up almost all of its trade capital in the deal that brought Westbrook to L.A., his struggles have been front and center this year. And now, according to Bill Oram of The Athletic, the Lakers’ brass has come to grips with the ceiling that this team has with Westbrook alongside Anthony Davis and LeBron James. The catch: It seems unlikely they’re able to remedy this any time soon.
Sources have indicated that the Lakers no longer believe they can win at a high level with Westbrook alongside James and Davis, but prior to Tuesday the line of thinking was that the Lakers would be unwilling to wave the white flag and admit their summer blockbuster was a failure. Instead, they would prefer to wait until the offseason, when they could also include a 2029 pick in a potential deal for another max-contract player looking for a new home.
Because of the pick haul that the Lakers sent to New Orleans in the trade that brought Davis to Los Angeles, the only first-round pick the team can currently trade is in 2027. That changes on July 1, when their 2029 first becomes eligible to be traded, and in theory, it’d be easier to move Westbrook if the team has that extra first it can attach to it.
Still, with one day until the trade deadline, it seems evident that Los Angeles believes something needs to change. Whether or not they can make that happen, though, remains to be seen.