SI:AM | What to Make of the Lakers’ Slow Start
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can guarantee you tomorrow’s newsletter will not be about tonight’s putrid Bears-Panthers game.
In today’s SI:AM:
🇺🇸 Biden’s meeting with former college football stars
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LeBron can’t do it all
Two weeks into the season is too soon for any NBA team to hit the panic button, but the Lakers should at least be beginning to worry.
Los Angeles got blown out by the Rockets last night in Houston, 128–94. The 34-point margin of defeat was the Lakers’ third-worst blowout of the LeBron James era. Sure, Anthony Davis sat out due to hip spasms (the same injury that forced him to leave Monday’s loss to the Heat early), but getting worked over by a team that went 22–60 last year isn’t a good sign for the Lakers. L.A. has now lost three in a row and is off to a 3–5 start.
LeBron had 18 points on 7-of-13 shooting in the loss, and D’Angelo Russell had 22 points and three blocks. The bright spot for the Lakers was Rui Hachimura, who had a team-high 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting off the bench.
The other silver lining for the Lakers was that the blowout allowed James to get some rest. None of L.A.’s starters played in the fourth quarter with the game out of reach. The team had intended to limit James’s minutes this season as he approaches his 39th birthday next month, but the Lakers have struggled offensively when he’s not on the floor. After playing 29 minutes in L.A.’s opening-night loss to the Nuggets, James played at least 35 minutes in five of the team’s next six games. He played 27 minutes last night before being benched in the final quarter.
Rohan Nadkarni wrote yesterday before the game against Houston about LeBron’s minutes and the Lakers’ early struggles. He argues that the Lakers can’t afford to limit James’s minutes the way they previously aimed to:
That’s because—through an obviously small sample size of only seven games—the Lakers have been absolutely putrid with James off the floor. Per Cleaning the Glass, Los Angeles is an astounding, San Andreas Fault–rumbling 48.6 points per 100 possessions (!!!) better with James on the floor this year. The Lakers have a plus-11.6 net with James on the court and a Washington Generals–esque minus-37.0 with him on the bench.
The Lakers are leaning on James to do so much because they’ve been decimated by injuries. Davis was one of five L.A. players sidelined due to injury last night. Jarred Vanderbilt is still waiting to make his season debut because of a heel injury, Gabe Vincent has a knee injury that’ll keep him out for at least another week, Jaxson Hayes has a sprained ankle and rookie Jalen Hood-Schifino hasn’t played this season due to a bruised kneecap. Hachimura also missed four games before returning last night.
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At this stage in his career, LeBron needs help. He’s put up excellent numbers thus far, with a career-best .670 shooting percentage on two-point attempts, and is carrying the team on his back like a much younger version of himself. But how long can he keep it up? He hasn’t played more than 60 games in a season since 2019–20. You obviously can’t put him on the same aging curve as his peers, but it’s exceedingly unlikely that he’ll be able to maintain this sort of workload over the course of a full season. That’s why the Lakers need Davis, Vincent and Vanderbilt back to lengthen their rotation. They also need Austin Reaves, whose three-point percentage has cratered from .398 last season to .278 this season, to step it up. Otherwise, this team isn’t a championship contender.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Photo Illustration by Erick W. Rasco; Photographs by Erick W. Rasco and Kohjiro Kinno
- Today’s Daily Cover is the cover story from the December issue of Sports Illustrated, our “How It Works” issue. In it, Mitch Goldich and Conor Orr explain how an army of anonymous staffers keep everything running smoothly on an NFL sideline.
- Richard Johnson was at the White House yesterday, where President Biden met with former college football players to discuss college athlete rights.
- In his NFL mailbag, Albert Breer tackled how the rest of the season may determine Kyler Murray’s future with the Cardinals.
- Here are our experts’ picks for all the Week 10 games in the NFL.
- In his latest Business of Football column, Andrew Brandt evaluates the future of the NFL abroad.
- Stephanie Apstein’s story about the stomach bug ailing MLB executives in Arizona has my favorite line I’ve read all week: “The GM meetings have become the GI meetings.”
- After last year’s Cinderella run to the Final Four, FAU has set out to test itself early this season. Kevin Sweeney has more on the Owls’ challenging out-of-conference schedule.
- The Angels have hired Ron Washington as their new manager.
The top five...
… things I saw last night:
5. Walt Frazier’s outfit for Victor Wembanyama’s first game at Madison Square Garden.
4. Hakeem Olajuwon’s and Clyde Drexler’s bizarrely synchronized sips of water while sitting courtside at the Rockets game.
3. Alex Caruso’s picture-perfect finger roll.
2. Anthony Edwards’s ridiculous hops on a chase-down block.
1. Ian Eagle’s call of James Harden’s errant pass: “That’s coming my way!”
SIQ
Today is former MLB slugger Adam Dunn’s 44th birthday. True or false: Dunn holds the MLB single-season record for strikeouts.
Yesterday’s SIQ: Who was the first Canadian-born player to win the AL or NL Rookie of the Year award?
- Fergie Jenkins
- Joey Votto
- Jason Bay
- Russell Martin
Answer: Jason Bay. He won in 2004, following an impressive first full season with the Pirates. Strangely, Bay was also the first Pittsburgh player to win the award. The Pirates had been the only pre-expansion MLB franchise without a Rookie of the Year winner. He remains the only Canadian player to win it. (Joey Votto finished second behind Geovany Soto in ’08.)
Bay was a runaway choice for the award, earning 25 of the 32 first-place votes. The other seven votes went to Padres shortstop Khalil Greene, and every voter who had Greene first put Bay second. Bay had the best offensive numbers of any rookie that season, batting .282 with 26 homers and a 132 OPS+, but Greene actually had the edge in WAR (3.2 to Bay’s 2.2) due to his defense at shortstop.
