Los Angeles Lakers: Three expectations to avoid having in 2019

2. Alex Caruso will have a big impact on the team

Again, Alex Caruso is someone who I am a very big fan of and have talked about extensively before as someone who could turn many heads and be much better than anyone outside of LA expected. However, because of his nature as a fan-favorite, the narrative around Caruso being a great sleeper role player has really grown.

I still don’t think that the entire fanbase has latched on to the idea of Caruso being great but when Rajon Rondo and Quinn Cook are your other point guards then you have to find something to get excited about.

Like Howard, the signs are there that Caruso will have a good 2019 season. He is a good defender and is a point guard that does not need the ball to succeed and can be an off-ball scorer. The problem is that he is yet to really prove it to us yet.

Yes, he has been really good in the brief flashes that we have seen from him at the NBA level but those flashes have come at the end of the season when everything is practically buttoned up. He has not yet played an NBA game that truly matters for anything in his career.

There is a very real chance that there is a massive learning curve there and that Caruso does not turn out to be anything close to what the fans had hoped for and finds himself slipping all the way to the bottom of the depth chart.

While there is promise, there is still a reason why he has been in the G League, not on the Lakers, for most of the last two years. Keep that in mind.