Lakers News: Ex-Laker Nick Young Has Piping Hot Take About L.A.'s 2020 Title-Winning Team
Retired journeyman shooting guard Nick Young has weighed in with a piping hot take about how well Russell Westbrook, your Los Angeles Lakers' current starting point guard, could fit in with Lakers clubs of the recent past.
Young, as you'll no doubt recall, was a Laker himself, during the team's 2013-17 wilderness years. He ultimately won a title with the Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors in 2018 as a reserve.
Westbrook from 2019-21 was no longer his MVP self. He did make his ninth, and presumably final, All-Star team in 2020 while with the Houston Rockets, but he had almost missed the cut after a rough start to that season. Granted, Young has a point -- this current Lakers team's starting lineup is not working. The fit of Patrick Beverley and Westbrook has been awkward, and the team's three perimeter starts are incredibly undersized.
That said, does Nick Young not recall that the 2019-20 Lakers actually faced off against Westbrook, along with James Harden and the rest of that season's fourth-seeded Houston Rockets club, during the 2020 Western Conference Semifinals? Rockets team president Darryl Morey had constructed a roster effectively without a true center to accommodate Westbrook's shooting issues.
That Rockets team fell in five games to the jumbo-sized, sharp-shooting Lakers, who thrived off having one of the league's top defenses under then-head coach Frank Vogel. Morey quit that summer, Westbrook demanded a trade out of town and was sent to the Washington Wizards, and Harden disrupted team chemistry during his first few games in the 2020-21 season, ultimately forcing a trade to the Brooklyn Nets. A year later, Harden disrupted team chemistry and forced a trade to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Los Angeles sported the NBA's top defense in the 2020-21 season, but major injuries to All-Stars Anthony Davis and to a lesser extent LeBron James sank the team to a 42-30 record (in a truncated year) and the seventh seed in the West. L.A. seemed to be giving the Phoenix Suns all they could handle in the first round, until Davis got hurt again and had to sit out the end of the series. Things had been tied 2-2 up till that point, but Phoenix closed a Davis-free L.A. club out via wins in the next two games. That team very easily could have stormed through the Western Conference for a second straight year had it not been for some rotten injury luck.
Team vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka (and presumably, James and Davis) panicked over the summer and offloaded two of the team's six best players, plus Montrezl Harrell and a first-round draft pick, for Westbrook's exorbitant contract. The team missed the postseason entirely in 2021-22, and could repeat that finish this year if it doesn't move on from Westbrook.
Young also pitched a trade last night, wherein L.A. would trade Westbrook's contract for two shooting guards who don't play defense:
Would Eric Gordon and Buddy Hield improve L.A.? Absolutely, of course. But the team needs taller wing defenders and solid shooters.
