Byron Scott isn't too pleased with his team. The Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Utah Jazz by a score of 119-86 on Thursday, following two defeats at the hands of the Golden State Warriors by a total of 56 points. While external expectations for these Lakers were low, there was a sense of we'll-prove-the-doubters-wrong optimism surrounding them at the beginning of training camp. With each passing preseason game, that is seeming more laughable. ESPN's Baxter Holmes described Scott as unable to hide his frustration:
After his team's 119-86 loss to the Utah Jazz on Thursday night at Honda Center, a visibly upset Scott said he told his players both at halftime and during postgame, "I'm going to find eight guys that's going to compete on both ends of the floor -- and that will be the eight that I roll with."
Scott added later, "That's all I need -- eight guys that's going to go out there and bust their butt every single night."
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"We'll see better results once we get healthier," Scott said. "That, to me, is the bottom line. If we can get healthy, then I think we have a chance to assess where we are and what we need to do.
"But until then, we'll probably have another one like this. Or two."
When asked what he liked about the game, Scott said, simply, "That it's over."
Yikes. Well, I wouldn't be happy, either, if it was my team was getting annihilated. But it's still preseason, and the only point guards available are Ronnie Price and Keith Appling. Things could get a bit better for the Lakers, right?
Uh ... sort of.
The biggest bugaboo for the Lakers has not been their scoring, which sounds funny considering they scored 86 points against the Jazz and only managed 75 against Golden State on Sunday. It's that they can't stop anybody. And I have some bad news: Steve Nash and Jeremy Lin getting healthy won't fix that. With time this group can get better and, obviously, much more cohesive, but it's unreasonable to expect a radical transformation without a serious concession from Scott with respect to style.
Scott has talked about this needing to be a defense-first team since before he was even given the job, but he really doesn't have the personnel to make that happen. It might have seemed like a good PR move to say the Lakers needed to do the opposite of what former coach Mike D'Antoni had them doing, but the culture change has gone too far. CBSSports.com's Zach Harper pointed out that Los Angeles hasn't made a single 3 in its last two games, and ESPN's Tom Haberstroh revealed that 24 players have made more long-range shots than the whole team:
That's almost never how you win in today's NBA, if it wasn't obvious already. And you can't just turn an assortment of score-first players into the Lionel Hollins version of the Memphis Grizzlies. Scott can talk about needing guys to play harder, but it's unlikely increased effort is going to make much of a difference. Expect more exasperated quotes in the future.