Lakers: Will LA Win Another Game In 2021?
Without All-Star big man Anthony Davis or head coach Frank Vogel across the past five games, your Los Angeles Lakers have suffered through their worst stretch of the 2021-22 NBA season to date, having lost five straight.
Even worse, the defeats haven't been particularly close. Los Angeles is losing by an average margin of 15.2 points per game during the stretch. The last three losses have come at home, at the newly-rechristened Crypto.com Arena.
LA has three chances to right the ship heading into the new year. So, can the Lakers win at least one of their three final contests of 2021? Let's break this down.
Tonight, the 16-18 Lakers will be in Houston playing against the bottom-feeding 10-24 Houston Rockets, the 15th seed in the Western Conference. At first blush, this looks like a winnable game. But the Lakers struggle to contain frisky guards, and will certainly have trouble against an athletic big man in Rockets double-double machine Christian Wood.
Houston will get its starting backcourt of point guard Kevin Porter Jr. and rookie shooting guard Jalen Green back and playing together for the first time in a month tonight. Rockets players D.J. Augustin, Kenyon Martin Jr., Garrison Mathews, and Jae’Sean Tate all remain in the league’s COVID-19 protocols. The Lakers, meanwhile, are without Davis and guard Kendrick Nunn due to injuries. Wayne Ellington is a non-coronavirus injury scratch. The team is also missing Trevor Ariza and Austin Reaves, plus little-used Kent Bazemore and Rajon Rondo, due to NBA coronavirus health and safety protocols.
In both of the two teams' prior two battles this year, the Lakers have beaten the Rockets, albeit by uncomfortably close margins (and with Anthony Davis available). The Lakers beat Houston 95-85 on Halloween, and then by 119-117 on November 2nd. This is a very losable game. On paper, the Lakers should win. But you could have said that about LA's lopsided Spurs loss at home, too.
Tomorrow night, the Lakers will square off against the ascendant Memphis Grizzlies at the FedEx Forum. At 21-14, Memphis looks to be securely in control of a top-four seed in the Western Conference standings, 3.5 games clear of the .500 Denver Nuggets (16-16) and Los Angeles Clippers (17-17). Across their last ten games, the Grizzlies are 7-3, and though they will be traveling to Los Angeles, they should be the heavy favorites. The Lakers and Grizzlies have split their season series to this point. The Lakers beat the Grizzlies on October 24th, by a single possession, 121-118. The Grizzlies then walloped the Lakers for their next matchup, on December 9th, to the tune of a 108-95 margin.
A young, athletic club with depth all over the roster, led by a young and still-improving star alongside players around him who generally fit, the Grizzlies represent sort of the opposite of the Lakers this season. This game, arriving on the second night of an LA back-to-back, will be a loss.
Finally, the Lakers wrap up what has been a brutal December against the Portland Trail Blazers, in another home game on New Year's Eve. In Carmelo Anthony's first game against the Trail Blazers since ditching rainy Portland for sunny LA on November 6th, Portland won, 105-90 (Melo had 12 points in 27 minutes). The Trail Blazers are not without their own coronavirus-related absences. Jusuf Nurkic, Robert Covington, Cody Zeller, Ben McLemore, Keljin Blevins, Dennis Smith Jr., and Trendon Watford are all unavailable due to being in the NBA's COVID-19 health and safety protocols. The outbreak has extended to Portland's bench, too. The team's head coach, Chauncey Billups, and assistant coach Roy Rogers have also been placed in coronavirus protocols.
From afar, this December 31st rematch could look like a push. Sporting a 13-20 overall record (and having gone 2-8 in its last ten games), the 11th-seeded Trail Blazers are currently on the outside of the West's play-in bracket picture looking in. And clearly there are plenty of Portland players in the NBA's coronavirus protocols.
But so long as Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum are available (McCollum's collapsed lung has healed and he is set to be re-evaluated a day before the matchup, per Shams Charania of The Athletic), and Anthony Davis is not, Portland has the edge. The Lakers' saving grace, of course, is Portland's horrific defense, which can't stop anybody. But LA would need some of its supporting players to get hot from deep.
So will the Lakers lose their next three games, for a total of eight straight, to close out 2021? My hunch says no. LA will go 1-2 to close out the month, and the year, grabbing a victory against Houston before dropping two straight to a much-better Grizzlies team and a scrappy Trail Blazers club.
