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| The Lakers are going to try for real this time. (Getty Images) |
The Los Angeles Lakers' season has finally begun.
This idea of Mike D'Antoni's won't take away the fact that the Lakers are five games below .500 after a convincing 113-93 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers that wasn't even really that close. However, if a team ever needed to slap the reset button in some way, it's the 16-21 Lakers. After the Lakers' loss to the Thunder Friday night, D'Antoni talked about how he told his team a new season was upon them.
“I told the team that the biggest thing is that our season starts Sunday,” coach Mike D’Antoni said, referring to the Lakers’ home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. “We put ourselves in this ditch and we are the only ones that can get ourselves out.”
This was an easy tactic for D'Antoni and something he needed to take advantage of with his team. After a bad loss to a team you're supposed to be "competing with" in the conference, it's easy to look at the schedule ahead of you, cherry-pick an easy game, and say, "this ends now." It should have ended for the Lakers long ago, but they've had injuries and a lackluster effort in their chaotic season.
D'Antoni probably saw a bad Cavaliers team coming to town and thought, "okay, we can definitely take this game and build on it." Sure, the Cavaliers beat them earlier in the season in Cleveland but this was a 5-17 road team heading into the Staples Center tonight. But the Lakers are supposed to believe they'll handle a bad team at home, even if Kyrie Irving is on that bad team.
It was a dominating performance by the Lakers that we expected to see throughout most of this season against other teams. The offense clicked 32 assists on 40 made baskets and 58 percent shooting from the field. They made 52 percent of their 3-point shots. Dwight Howard was dominant, Steve Nash was the table-setter, and Kobe Bryant scored pretty easily. They even got contributions from three roles players (Earl Clark, Antawn Jamison, and Darius Morris).
This is the recipe the Lakers are supposed to have against most teams, not just the bad ones. Los Angeles played at a pace (roughly 98 possessions) that D'Antoni loves to have his team playing at. Some of that was due to 22 turnovers, but the Lakers still were able to get out and score in transition.
The question now is where do the Lakers go from here?
The season just started for them as they try to dig themselves out of this ditch. They'll host a good and dangerous Milwaukee Bucks team on Tuesday. If they can manage to outduel their backcourt and finish against the length of the Bucks' frontcourt, they'll take a two-game winning streak into their showdown with the Miami Heat in Los Angeles on Thursday night.
And that's where we'll know if D'Antoni's "reset button" strategy is worth anything more than just lip service to his team. The Lakers can't afford to just try to feast on the bad teams like they've done all season. They're 9-5 against teams below .500 and 7-16 against non-losing teams.
The hole they've dug for themselves in the first half of this season is too big to keep up that charade of beating the bad teams and falling to the good ones. They no longer have a month or two months to get things together to make a run. Things have to come together now or risk the embarrassment of missing the playoffs with four future Hall of Fame players on the roster.
