It May Be Time to Panic in Lakers Land

The Lakers have played at an unacceptable level this season. With no wins against the Celtics, Spurs, Mavericks, or Heat thus far, the Lakers may have a similar record to last year at this point, but they have been blessed with having one of the easiest first halves of a season ever. There are several guilty parties involved and these are the top offenders:

Andrew Bynum
Yes, he didn't play until November, but that was his own fault. After re-injuring his right knee shortly before the 2010 playoffs, Bynum decided not to have surgery on it until after the playoffs because he knew how much his team needed him to repeat as champions. Most people expected Bynum to have surgery ASAP once they won the NBA championship, but Bynum decided to decline surgery because he would not be able to travel to South Africa and attend the World Cup. He was there the entire month. After returning stateside and having his knee looked at, it was determined that his knee was even more severely injured than previously thought. If Bynum had his surgery immediately after the Finals, he could have missed at most the first 2 or 3 weeks of the regular season. Not like it matters though, Bynum seems to have injured his knee again (though thankfully, not a serious injury). Bynum has also been playing like crap this season, a testament to his crappy knees and amazing ability to get easily distracted.

Ron Artest
Artest always has been and always will be a competitive player. But one of the problems with Ron Artest as a Laker is he has been spending far too much time passing the ball and playing defense rather than be the 3-point shooter that he is. Although his defense certainly helped lead to the last championship, his clutch 3-point shooting also got the Lakers there. Artest said after the Finals that he was going to give up smoking pot. At this point, it looks like he should go back to smoking the herb because his play was much better!

Steve Blake
Blake has been guilty of the same things Artest has been, spending too much time setting other players up and not taking his own shots. Blake was even primarily hired because of his 3-point shooting abilities! C'mon Steve, just shoot some threes!

Derek Fisher
Fisher's playing days are clearly over. He's had one of his worst seasons ever thus far and is clearly out of gas. The Lakers need to move Fisher to the bench and let Shannon Brown take over as the starting PG so that Fisher can flourish as he did during his first stint as a Laker.

Mitch Kupchak
The genius architect of the Pau Gasol trade also managed to (at this point) foolishly trade away Sasha Vujacic in exchange for aging veteran Joe Smith, who has yet to play longer than 5 minutes in a game. He's recently threatened to make a trade in order to re-invigorate the Lakers, but that clearly didn't work seeing how horrible they played defense in their game against the Rockets today. Kupchak needs to pull off one of his legendary moves and either trade away what's definitely not working (Bynum), or trade away the excess (Caracter, Ebanks, Ratliff, Smith) to get one player that can re-ignite the Lakers.

If something big doesn't happen by the Trade Deadline, I doubt the Lakers can even make it to the Western Conference Finals.


Unless of course, the Lakers Playoff Switch continues to exist....

It worked pretty well the last two years against the Rockets and Thunder.