LA Lakers Face Road Test In Charlotte

For the LA Lakers, the bench has become their biggest weapon.

As it stands right now, the Lakers need all the help they can get.

Today they take on the Charlotte Hornets, a team that’s more than surprised most of the Eastern Conference.

To no surprise, though, the Lakers are still in a losing rut.

The team comes into today’s action on the back of a three-game losing streak, including a disastrous loss against the Grizzlies in Memphis last night.

Playoffs don’t deserve to be in any Lakers discussion, but the focus has started to shift to the damage this bench lineup could do.

When in the right mindset, both D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle have shown they can flourish wherever the organization needs them in that moment.

Many thought Russell’s growth would be stunted in the move to the bench, but the last several games have gone on to prove us wrong in that respect.

Overall, though, the biggest plus for the Lakers this season has been Jordan Clarkson.

Of all the players on the roster, Clarkson, even though he’s only in his second NBA season, is the best-suited guy to take the lead after Kobe Bryant‘s career officially hits triple zeros.

The Lakers haven’t had any easy nights, so hopefully they can take advantage of a Hornets team in transition.

Despite Charlotte’s excellent play for most of the season, the Eastern Conference has proven to be the better of the two when it comes to being well-rounded.

This season, there’s teams that are above .500 that aren’t in the playoffs — Charlotte happens to be one of them, if the season ended today — and that was not the case last season.

Between the top four teams in the East, there is only a difference of 1.5 games — with only three games separating spots 1-8.

In the Western Conference, however, the biggest things for them are the Warriors, Spurs, and Thunder.

There’s reason to include the Clippers in that list, but that insertion is entirely dependent on whether or not they decide to show up in the playoffs or not.

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We know that they can play against the best teams and do just fine, the only issue for that team is consistency.

For the Lakers, they can’t seem to get enough right to get wins.

Even though we aren’t even halfway through the season, the only motivation the Lakers have to win games at this point is to try and save the franchise some dignity.

While not entirely a bad reason to want to win, it’d probably help if the goal was playoffs come the end of the season.

And even compared to the worst playoff teams in the West, the Lakers have zero chance to gain that kind of ground.

Plus, dare I say that they made it, they’d be pulverized in the first-round by the Warriors without a doubt.

Next: LA Clippers Will Thrive In The Middle

They just need to focus one game at a time and not get ahead of themselves — Charlotte is the perfect place to get that positive habit going.