Things are not going well for the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant is injured again. The youth of the team is struggling to develop the way Byron Scott is hoping they would. While playoff aspirations were never part of the picture this season, the Lakers were certainly hoping things would go better than they currently are trade rumors continue to swirl around the team. Will the team be forced to make moves if poor play continues?
D'Angelo Russell continues to find himself at the center of frustrations for Scott. The rookie point guard has struggled with consistency this season while seeing the bench several times as a result. After being draft No.2 overall, the Lakers were hoping for a little more from the point guard. Things came to a blow once again in the loss to the Dallas Mavericks when Scott benched Russell in the fourth quarter for "trying to take over."
"I saw the last couple minutes that he was in that he was really trying to take over the game, and that's not him yet," Scott said, via ESPN.com. "I want the ball to move a little bit. I thought it stuck with him. He tried to make the big shots and things like that. I understand that, but to me, that's not him right now."
The Lakers need Russell to be a star. The team drafted him as the next franchise star, but he has yet to look the part. Scott was critical of the rookie saying he needed to be more aggressive in scoring and make better decisions on the court. The rise and fall of Russell brings Jordan Clarkson into the picture and his impending restricted free agency. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the Lakers are favoring the idea of keeping Clarkson around despite already having Russell simply because he is reliable scoring depth. Contract talks will go a long way into determining whether or not this actually happens, but for now with Russell struggling, Clarkson is critical.
General manager Mitch Kupchak told the Daily News that there has been trade interest in young players like Clarkson considering they are signed to cheap contracts, but the team is not interested in dealing them. Julius Randle is another player who has had his name come up in trade talk with a deal unlikely to happen. Instead, ESPN.com reports Roy Hibbert, Nick Young and Brandon Bass are the players the team is hoping to trade off at the deadline. With players like Kevin Durant and DeMar DeRozan targets in free agency with max contracts, the Lakers would rather trade off unwanted deals and free up salary cap space.