The Los Angeles Lakers are 0-5 to start the preseason, and even though those games don’t count, some fans are still worried about the team’s performances. The NBA season is a couple of days away and their Big 3 has barely played together.
Fans were excited to see the Lakers take on the Golden State Warriors, as it would give them a glimpse of how their new offense would look. Sadly, they were erratic for most of the game and clearly aren’t in the same page just yet.
With that in mind, Lakers stars LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, and coach Frank Vogel were brutally honest on the current status of the team as we approach the start of the season.
Lakers News: LeBron, Davis, Westbrook Open Up On Their Bad Debut
“It’s going to take a minute for us to become the team that we know we are going to be capable of being,” James told ESPN. “We’re going to have moments where we’re not quite right there. We may take steps backwards. But that’s all part of … I think nothing is worth having if it’s not worth working for.”
“Me, as a leader, my job is for myself not to get frustrated,” James added. “If I don’t get frustrated, I think it will trickle down to everyone else. I’ve never been a person that’s OK with not being excellent. But I understand things take time as well. As long as I keep the main thing the main thing, stay even keel throughout whatever is going on with our ballclub, then we’ll be fine.”
Russell Westbrook was more optimistic and wasn’t bothered by his team’s sloppy play. He knows that there’s still a long road ahead of them to become the team they know they can become:
“We had some good spurts,” added the former Scoring Champion.“Obviously, it’s the first game. But there are some good things we can take from it. … We can be a little encouraged by it.”
The same can be said of Anthony Davis, who hadn’t played at all during preseason while nursing injuries. He knows the team can be better and that it will just be a matter of time before they click:
“We saw some great things with me, Bron and Russ in action,” Davis said. “There’s endless possibilities, the things we can run and we can do. … And even though there were good things, a lot of things that we can do better.”
Coach Frank Vogel was a little more blunt and pressimistic, saying that it could take them the whole season to fulfill their potential. That’s not exactly what the fans want to hear with the season so close:
“It could take all year to really be at our best, and ideally, that’s when we are at our best — going into the playoffs,” coach Vogel admitted. “But we have the mindset to hit the ground running and come out of the gates really strong with things clicking as best as we can. … But it’s reasonable to think that there’s going to be some bumpy nights early in the season, but we had the expectation coming in two years ago and we jumped out of the gates pretty strong. So, that’s what we’re hoping for.”
The Lakers have a lot of talent so it’s only a matter of time before the figure things out and make each other better. But in the meantime, things could get pretty ugly for the purple and gold.
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