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The 2020-21 NBA season started off with promise but ended in disaster for LeBron James and the LA Lakers. There were some highlights along the way but the good couldn’t overcome the bad in the Lakers’ disappointing bid to repeat as champions.
For the first time in his career, James suffered a first-round exit and bowed out humbly to the rampaging Phoenix Suns, who are representing the Western Conference in the NBA Finals this season. In a year when injuries to star players occurred on a regular basis, the LA Lakers were among the hardest hit, with James and Anthony Davis both sidelined for lengthy stretches.
The LA Lakers’ season ended too early. Had it not been for a number of factors, the Purple and Gold could have had a deeper playoff run.
Here are 5 things that didn’t go the LA Lakers' way this season:
#5 The season started too early for the LA Lakers
NBA players were hoping to start the 2020-21 campaign around mid-January, but the owners won out and the regular season started on Dec. 22 last year. This came just two months after the LA Lakers played Game 6 of the 2020 NBA Finals to claim the championship during a pandemic-affected season.
That meant that rest and recuperation time for the bubble-weary squad was going to be the shortest ever in league history, considering also that training camp and pre-season games would be held prior to the 22nd.
By midseason, LA Lakers players were already voicing out how fatigued they were, with Markieff Morris stating that he had resorted to meditation just to keep himself from feeling the tiredness. In other words, coach Frank Vogel’s team was running on fumes way before the playoffs started and it seriously derailed their chances to repeat as champions.
#4 No consistent 3-point shooting
There was a time early in the season when guards Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso were in the top three in 3-point shooting percentage.
But as the season wore on, the LA Lakers’ lack of 3-point shooting was exposed and opponents exploited this weakness. During the regular season, they were 21st in 3-point percentage (35.4%) and 25th in 3-point shots made per game (11.1).
Opponents clogged the lane and made it difficult for the team’s slashers and their big men from getting easy looks in the paint. Teams called their bluff and dared the Lakers to shoot the three. The results were often not pretty.
#3 Kyle Kuzma didn’t blossom into a 3rd star
Two years into the LeBron James-Anthony Davis All-Star combo, the LA Lakers are still waiting for Kyle Kuzma to become their third star and find his identity as a player.
Is he a small forward or a power forward? Is he a 3-point shooter or a slasher? Is he a specialist or an all-around player?
No one seems to know for sure and, unfortunately, neither does Kuzma.
The talented 25-year-old averaged 12.9 points and 6.1 rebounds per game while shooting 36.1 percent from beyond the arc. These are respectable numbers for a role player, but the expectations for Kuzma are way higher. After teasing LA Lakers fans with an 18.7-point average in his second season, he has gradually regressed and become somewhat of an enigma.
When James and Davis were both out for a significant period during the regular season, Kuzma could have stepped up and been a 20-point scorer from that point on. However, the LA Lakers forward only averaged 15.7 points in 14 games, showing a lack of feel for the game that the best players possessed.
#2 LeBron James and Anthony Davis were injured
Valentine’s Day could not have been much worse for Davis. The eight-time All-Star suffered a calf strain and Achilles tendonosis against the Denver Nuggets, which caused him to sit out 30 games. It was the most he had missed in a season, and that’s not counting other injury-related DNP’s.
James followed suit more than a month later when he sustained a high right ankle sprain against the Atlanta Hawks which caused him to miss 26 games, including games he skipped when he re-aggravated the injury two games after his comeback.
The LA Lakers struggled without their superstars and during the games they played while trying to re-acclimate themselves to playing with their teammates and vice versa.
By the time the postseason arrived, the LA Lakers were once again hit with a spate of injuries that took out Davis again, Caldwell-Pope and Caruso, who missed the second half of their last game against the Phoenix Suns.
James played every game against the Suns but he was clearly far from being 100 percent, needing perhaps more rest to recover from the ankle sprain.
#1 The LA Lakers faced the Phoenix Suns in the first round
There were so many scenarios that could have played out during the final games of the regular season. The LA Lakers could have been seeded between fifth and eighth in the tough Western Conference depending on how the last two weeks of the season played out.
The LA Lakers' first-round opponent could have been the Utah Jazz, Denver Nuggets, LA Clippers, Denver Nuggets or Portland Trail Blazers. Instead, they got the worst possible matchup by facing a Finals-bound Phoenix Suns team that owned the third-best net rating in the regular season (5.9), and currently have the second-best defensive rating (106.7) and second-highest net rating (6.9) in the postseason.
As the playoffs progressed, it became clear that the only reason why the LA Lakers had a 2-1 series lead against the Suns was because Chris Paul suffered a shoulder injury in the first game that hampered his play in the first round. After Game 4 with the series tied at 2-2, Paul’s team showed why they were the second-best regular season team in the league, and quite possibly the best team in the postseason when they dismantled the Lakers in the next two games.
If the LA Lakers had faced any of the aforementioned four teams, who knows how far they could have gone in the postseason.
