5 Takeaways From The Lakers' First Meetings With The Best Of The West

Your revamped Los Angeles Lakers are off to a 1-1 start to their 2023-24 season, having faced perhaps their stiffest competition in the Western Conference in the form of the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns earlier this week.

Tonight, they'll be heading north up the PCH to deal with another formidable West foe in the form of the Sacramento Kings, last year's No. 3 seed.

The bad news: the Lakers could easily be 0-2 right now, having barely secured a toss-up against a Phoenix team missing two of its three best players in Bradley Beal and Devin Booker. We've seen a lot of issues with this roster, which we'll unpack here.

The good news: we're only two games into the regular season, those games were against literally the two best teams in the West (at least, according to Vegas) and a lot of this stuff is correctable.

5. Rui Hachimura Is Getting Paid A Lot Of Money To Ride Pine Late

After inking a three-year, $51 million deal in restricted free agency this summer, Hachimura has averaged just 13.5 minutes across his first two games of 2023-24, having already lost the starting power forward spot many of us expected would be his to start the year. He's averaging just 6.5 points on .384/.200/1.000 shooting and 1.5 rebounds. Taurean Prince has been elevated to a starting small forward role while LeBron James has been moved back to the starting power forward gig he occupied during the start of the 2022-23 season.

4. Is Gabe Vincent Really Just The New Dennis Schröder, Not The New D’Angelo Russell?

The 6'3" point guard out of UC Santa Cruz, formerly a starter for the Miami Heat during their playoff run to the NBA Finals, has similarly looked fairly unimpressive through his first two games with his new squad.

He's averaging just 6.5 points on .333/.000/.500 (that three-point percentage comes at a rate of 4.5 attempts per), 4.0 assists, two rebounds and two steals a night, in a robust 28.5 minutes as essentially LA's sixth man off the bench. Part of the issue stems from the fact that Darvin Ham is occasionally playing him next to D'Angelo Russell as an off-guard, part of it is that he has to clean up defensively for Russell and/or Reaves when he plays alongside either or both of those defensively semi-challenged starters, and part of it might just be a cold shooting streak.

It's still disconcerting to see D-Lo roundly outplay Vincent on offense, while himself not playing particularly efficiently. The 6'4" OSU product is averaging 12.5 points on a rough .357/.250/667 shooting splits, six assists, four rebounds, 1.5 steals and 0.5 blocks across a team-leading 34.5 minutes a night.

3. LeBron James Is Still Doing Too Much

The 38-year-old may not be playing like a typical 38-year-old, but he's still playing too much and handling the ball too much, especially in late game situations.

James has at least cut back his long-range shooting, having reduced his three-point output to 4.5 from 6.9 last year, but he's also shooting worse from deep than he ever has before (22.2%). Of course, it's only been two games, so this stat is probably more of a statistical anomaly than a trend we need to be concerned about, for now anyway. He's playing a career-low 32 minutes a night, which is great, but he also had to go over his previously-established minutes limit of 28-30 per game on Thursday to help steer LA to a hard-fought victory against the Suns. He needs to feature his starting backcourt more frequently late in games, and to trust that D'Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves can help him open up driving lanes late.

2. Austin Reaves Isn’t Doing Enough

Conversely, LA's freshly re-signed starting shooting guard deserves more of a late-game role, precisely because he's generally such a great shooter and passer. He and D-Lo should in theory get out of their recent shooting slumps, but it would help if James and Davis looked for them a bit more. Given that I still believe Russell is destined to be dealt later, while Reaves is a long-term piece, I'm more concerned that Reaves benefits from more late-game touches than Russell.

1. Anthony Davis Isn’t Nikola Jokic Or Joel Embiid — And That’s Okay!

AD has struggled at times already this season, and has been lambasted by a lot of national pundits. People might expect him to be Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid, who together have won the last three league MVPs, but that's just not his game. He has lost his shooting touch, a skill at which he was never quite elite anyway. Embiid is a very good jump shooter, while Jokic is a stupendous one. Both are also better passers. Davis is a better defender than Jokic, but in one-on-one matchups really can't do all that much to stop him. Davis still might be perhaps a top-four or -five center in the league (at least behind Bam Adebayo as well as Jokic and Embiid), and a great defender at the single-most important defensive position in the game. The eight-time All-Star remains a quality talent, and good enough (with the right shooting pieces around him) to help the Lakers return to the promised land this season. Comparing him to two consistently better players is a fool's errand. He's never going to get there.

LA's next contest, a matchup against longtime Pacific Division nemesis the Sacramento Kings, is scheduled for tonight at 6 p.m. PT on NBA TV. We'll see if Darvin Ham can make some changes.

Are you following us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or LA Sports Report yet? Join the conversation as we discuss the latest Lakers news and rumors with fans like you!