Why The Lakers and Nets Have Started The 2022-23 NBA Season Poorly

With great expectation comes greater responsibility and so far, both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets have failed the accountability test.

These are two different teams in completely different situations, yet much the same is expected of both – be championship contenders given the top-end talent available.

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LA Lakers 2022-23 Struggles

For the Lakers, it’s more of a pipe dream than anything else. A franchise that has had so much success is always expectant, regardless of reality.

LeBron James is one of the greatest of all time, but even Harry Houdini would struggle to create success out of the motley crew that is the Lakers.

It took until their sixth game of the 2022-23 season to notch a victory, a 121-110 win over the flailing Nuggets.

Perhaps more importantly, it signalled the first time the Laker triumvirate actually worked well.

Russell Westbrook is the point of attack when assessing the team, but his buy-in as the sixth man against Denver perhaps showed a path forward that could be beneficial – he finished with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists on 50% shooting, while ending up with a team-high +/- figure.

Russell Westbrook tonight off the bench:

18 Points
8 Rebounds
8 Assists
50% FG
2/4 3PM
4/4 FTM pic.twitter.com/htbV08tNEG

— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) October 31, 2022

While encouraging, it doesn’t change just how bad the start of the season has been. Through the first six games, the Lakers’ offensive rating is the worst it has been since the 1975-76 season.

As a team, the Lakers are shooting a clear league-worst 26.6% from beyond the arc, yet are still ranked 12th for how many three-point shots they’ve taken. 

The Lakers in the bottom seven for free-throw attempts and top eight for turnovers committed. Matt Ryan (54.5%) and Austin Reaves (47.1%) are the only players who have taken multiple 3s in a game and are shooting at over 29%.

Coach Darvin Ham’s woes can be excused ever so slightly by the opening run of games including Golden State, the Clippers and Denver away, but winnable games against Portland and Minnesota saw a team relying heavily on a 20-year veteran fall away in second halves.

Defensively, they’ve been okay. 

Their opponents are shooting just 44.2% from the field, ranking the Lakers sixth. They’re also ranked sixth for fewest points conceded in the paint. Anthony Davis has been a menace around the basket, averaging two blocks per game, to go with his 2.4 steals. 

Damian Jones and Wenyen Gabriel have been getting minimal minutes as the backup bigs, but have protected the rim excellently when on the court.

While Westbrook’s defensive limitations have always been known, his active hands away from the basket have been just as relevant as Lonnie Walker’s hustle and Patrick Beverley’s physicality.

Perhaps they’ve been victims of a tough opening set of games, tied in with the unfair expectation that this squad of players could be anything more than a play-in team, but the Lakers have an opportunity to improve their record.

In the next 10 games, the lakers play Utah twice, as well as Detroit, Sacramento and San Antonio. Wins here and competitiveness and commitment defensively against tougher opponents might let the Lakers get back on track but realistically, the avenue to success will come through statement roster changes – perhaps beyond just the Westbrook trade.

Yet for all the struggles of the Lakers, their start to the season hasn’t exactly shocked the masses.

To feel disappointed is to have set the bar too high for them to achieve. In that context, Brooklyn’s been far worse, even if some people weren’t convinced about them.

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Brooklyn Nets 2022-23 Struggles

Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Ben Simmons. This is our first time seeing the Australian play with the team, and we haven’t seen enough of the Durant/Irving combination in recent seasons anyway to have projected immediate success.

On paper though, this is a team with true, NBA championship-level talent. Arguably the best player in the world, with two all-star calibre players at their best, surrounded by some of the league’s best role-playing shooters (Joe Harris, Seth Curry, Patty Mills), with some defensive protection on the perimeter and at the rim (Royce O’Neale, Nic Claxton) – this is a good group.

Perhaps it would’ve been acceptable to sit at 3-3, if not 4-2, having played the Pelicans, Raptors, Grizzlies and Bucks. Yet the two home losses to Dallas and then the Pacers, a team not aiming to be successful, has left the Nets on the end of some justifiably stinging criticism.

Brooklyn’s woes aren’t just on-court – Kyrie Irving would have been in far more trouble in other organisations, but the Nets are in such a warped, confused state that their tolerance for his actions is somehow guided by the desperation to win.

The obvious elephant in the room reaches mass appeal given the local investment in the Southern Hemisphere, but Ben Simmons’ return from an uber-long layoff has not been good.

“SHOOT IT BEN!”

Kyrie Irving is begging Ben Simmons to shoot the ball 😭 pic.twitter.com/gXGlCtB4QJ

— Complex Sports (@ComplexSports) October 27, 2022

Due to the injuries, he deserves to be excused at least a tiny bit, however the defensive prowess and hunger seen in his first three seasons has been non-existent. 

Simmons’ all-defensive team potential is meant to be the glue that holds the team together, along with the other defensive pieces. 

Instead, through the first six games, the Nets have conceded 122.2 points on average, the most in the league. Their opponents are shooting 43.8% from three, the highest percentage in the league, while they’re also top-five for free throw attempts by the opposition.

Claxton’s been a big highlight, averaging two blocks a game and protecting the rim superbly. 

The issue though, has been the pure reliance on Durant and Irving offensively, meaning their defensive assignments have had to be lacking.

The KD-Kyrie duo has combined for 62.5 shots per game on 49.3% shooting, incredible efficiency when you consider they’re only shooting 30.3% from their 15 three-point attempts per game.

Their steal and block numbers look great too, but expecting such two-way output for an entire season from typically injury-prone players leaves the Nets in a hole.

It brings the attention back onto Simmons. His playmaking has been really good in bursts, finding the perimeter players with plenty of space and his ball protection has been good.

But for Brooklyn to be able to quickly rise, they need Simmons to be more aggressive in finding attacking the rim, and far more active defensively.

Through his first six games in two seasons, he’s averaging 5.7 field goals a game (only shooting 44.1%), half his career average. There have been multiple times he has stopped en route to the basket to find a more confident trailer.

Perhaps Simmons just needs more time, maybe it’s just confidence.

The moment he’s more aggressive offensively, he will attract attention and create even more space for his teammates.

Inevitably, that’ll translate to his aggressiveness on defence too – the Nets need a far more hostile, in-your-face Simmons, rather than the passive, lane-focussed version they’re currently getting.

Unlike the Lakers, Brooklyn has the definite, bonafide talent that can drag them to at least home-court advantage in a play-in tournament but more specifically, a guaranteed playoff spot should everyone stay fit and healthy.

While six games is a tiny sample size, the stature of the Lakers and the Nets tends to mean that there are no such things as overreactions.

Few teams entered the season with as much pressure as these two and so far, neither have been able to pass even the most rudimentary of tests.

It’s only a matter of time before things turnaround, but how patient can fans and owners be?