Lakers: NBA Expert/Insider Feels Russell Westbrook Needs time to Adjust to LeBron James

Michael Smith says it's not nearly time to panic for the Lakers.

The Lakers new-look roster hasn't impressed everyone. After blowing a 26-point lead to the Thunder Wednesday night, the prognostications have gotten even worse. 

NBA insider and former ESPN analyst Michael Smith was recently on the Rich Eisen Show and talked about the Lakers. His opinion is that it is way too early to hit the panic button.

"It's too small a sample size not to mention the last two games have had no LeBron James. A lot of confirmation bias is going on for the people who are like 'see told you this chemistry experiment wasn't going to work,' because we knew coming into the season that they were not going to be a great shooting team."

As for Russell Westbrook and his struggles, Smith put into context what Westbrook fans and those who aren't ready to panic have been saying since Westbrook was signed.

"We knew that Russell Westbrook was going to have to adjust to playing with LeBron James, who's going to flourish mostly when LeBron James is either on the bench, or resting as the case may be, or injured, unfortunately. We know defensively they were going to have some things to figure out. We knew they were an older team and that it was going to take time. We didn't know it was going to be this ugly this early but I still don't want to push the panic button yet."

Smith is right. It's far too early to completely panic. Yesterday we pondered the idea of Westbrook coming off the bench. Whether he starts the game on the floor is really ceremonial instead of being of real consequence. Lakers coach Frank Vogel is either going to let LeBron James and Westbrook figure out how to play at the same time, or Vogel will stagger their floor time to make the best lineups without missing any ball-handling and scoring. So much hinges on the Westbrook/James adjustment, and Vogel's ability to make the adjustments as well.