No one expected the Lakers to be a playoff contender. Or at least no one reasonable. Many Laker fans were content with the team showing a modest improvement in the win total category.
The main focus of this season was to develop youth and show signs of improvement going forward, giving Laker fans reason for optimism. In the grand scheme of things, the win total this year was irrelevant. It was a matter of process vs. results. If the Lakers are doing things the right way, there was little reason to worry about how many wins they came away with.
Which is what makes the opening four games of the season so concerning. The Lakers being 0-4 isn’t the important part. The process is getting to those four losses in four games is majorly concerning.
Byron Scott has made a mess of rotations already this season. In back-to-back games, the franchise’s backcourt of the future, Jordan Clarkson (vs. Dallas) and D’Angelo Russell (vs. Denver) couldn’t get off the pine to help close out a winnable contest. Russell played exactly zero minutes in the fourth quarter against Denver.
Even more concerning is that Kobe Bryant, who has looked anything but himself this season, and Lou Williams (29 years old) closed out both games in the backcourt.
Furthering the concerns are Byron’s comments after games, which offers zero confidence in his abilities:
How does D'Angelo get on the court at the end of the game? D'Angelo: "I have no idea."
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) November 4, 2015
Lakers coach Byron Scott: "Kobe's the last person that I worry about."
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) November 4, 2015
His process offers not only no optimism for Laker fans, but no results either.
He’ll foolishly stick to lineups that don’t work (Ryan Kelly and Brandon Bass in the frontcourt).
He’ll change rotations on a whim without much logic (Tarik Black playing 18 minutes vs. Denver, Roy Hibbert playing 17 minutes).
He spent the pre-season raving about Anthony Brown, even starting him for a handful of games, including most of the contests Bryant missed with injury. Yet, in four games this season, Brown has seen a total of four minutes, all coming in garbage time against Sacramento.
You can’t trust the process with Byron because not even Byron knows what the process is.
The worry now is that Scott could stunt the development of one of the young players, namely Russell, who has seem to drawn the focus of Byron’s crazy antics.
Russell, a ball-dominant player drafted as the point guard of the future, was started as a shooting guard to open the season only after a long, long deliberation heading into the season-opener.
At this point, there’s no reason to have faith in Byron, and that’s worrisome. He’s shown at this point that he doesn’t “get it”; that he doesn’t understand this season should be about developing youth.
In an argument of process vs. results, Byron has chosen results, and still can’t even accomplish a positive in that. And that is what should have Laker fans concerned.
