Things could be going better for the Los Angeles Lakers. The team entered this season with championship-or-bust aspirations, and as of right now, they run the risk of not even making the play-in tournament — L.A. is 27-35, which puts them in the 9-seed in the Western Conference with only a two-game lead on the Portland Trail Blazers for the 11-seed.
There are about a million different reasons why they’ve underperformed this season, with one of the primary ones being Russell Westbrook‘s season-long struggles to fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. There’s plenty of blame to go around for why the Westbrook experiment has gone awry, and perhaps they’re able to figure some things out down the stretch of the season — particularly once Davis returns from an ankle injury — but banking on Westbrook to be the team’s third star simply has not worked.
With one year left on his contract after this season, questions exist about his future with the team. According to Marc Stein’s most recent newsletter, though, there’s not much of a question among those in the know about what’s coming once Los Angeles gets to the offseason.
Jousting with reporters in press conferences is apparently not the lone source of pushback these days from under-fire guard Russell Westbrook. There has been no shortage of defiance behind the scenes, I’m told, when coaches and teammates have tried to broach changes in role or approach with the former MVP. For all the obvious complexities involved in trying to move Westbrook when he’s owed a whopping $47 million next season at age 34, one league source described the idea of bringing him back next season as “impossible” based on current tension levels. The question then becomes: If the Lakers can’t construct a palatable trade, do they try to just buy Westbrook out? Or waive and stretch him?
The report comes days after the Lakers lost to the Clippers and Frank Vogel responded to a question about possibly benching Westbrook by cryptically saying that the coaching staff has discussed everything. During his press conference following the loss, Westbrook expressed that he is still trying to figure out his role with the team, as he claims it changes on a nightly basis.