The Lakers reached rock bottom in a 49-point loss on Sunday, the anniversary of Kobe Bryant's 81-point game against the Toronto Raptors.
L.A. managed just 73 points against the Mavericks, taking them down to 6-22 since the start of December. Only the 4-22 Brooklyn Nets have been worse in that span.
With the excitement of the Lakers' 10-10 start now a distant memory, it's worth checking in on their young core to see how far away the Lakers are from competing in the Western Conference -- and whether this group will be intact when they get there.
Randle and Russell have slumped since strong starts
The Lakers' unexpectedly strong start was built primarily on offense. Even when they were .500, they ranked 27th in the league in defensive rating, according to NBA.com/Stats.
Since then, the Lakers' defense has only gotten worse while their offense has cratered. They've dropped to 25th in the NBA in offensive rating after ranking in the top half of the league through November. (That's a better indication of their decline than the raw numbers because leaguewide offensive performance has trended upward.)
In part, that can be blamed on injuries to starting guards D'Angelo Russell (currently out 1-2 weeks with a sprained MCL and a strained calf muscle) and Nick Young. According to NBA.com/Stats, the Lakers have managed less than a point per possession with injury replacements Jose Calderon and Marcelo Huertas on the court this season.
However, it also reflects recent lottery picks Russell and Julius Randle fading after strong starts. At the end of November, Randle's true shooting percentage was an impressive .572, a dramatic improvement from the .482 mark he posted in his first full season. Since then, it has dropped to .525. Meanwhile, Russell's true shooting percentage has dropped from .534 to .489, worse than his .507 mark as a rookie.
Randle's development is a fascinating case study. According to NBAwowy.com, when playing power forward alongside one of the team's traditional centers (Timofey Mozgov, Tarik Black and Ivica Zubac), he has shot about the same dismal percentage on 2-point attempts (43.6 percent) as he did in 2015-16 (43.5 percent). Randle's improvement, then, can largely be traced to playing in smaller lineups with better floor spacing. When he's the lone big man on the court, Randle shoots an incredible 65.8 percent on 2-point attempts.
Lineups with Randle as the lone big man have scored 113.1 points per 100 possessions, a mark bettered this season only by the Golden State Warriors (113.6). Unfortunately, the Lakers have given up 116.2 points per 100 possessions, as Randle doesn't have the ability to anchor a defense as a center. His improved playmaking (Randle has doubled his assist rate this season) is encouraging, but Randle can only become a plus contributor if he scores efficiently as a power forward.
The same is true for Russell, who has proved more capable of creating shots than hitting them thus far in his NBA career. Because Russell rarely gets to the basket off the dribble and doesn't finish well there (he's shooting only 57.1 percent inside 3 feet this season, per Basketball-Reference.com), that will likely require improving his average 3-point shooting (34.9 percent career).
Russell has actually shot well (43.0 percent) on catch-and-shoot 3s, according to SportVU tracking on NBA.com/Stats. It's pull-up 3s that have been an issue: Russell is making them at a 27.7 percent clip, and because most of those come when opponents go under screens, Russell is averaging just 0.65 points on pick-and-roll plays, second worst among players with at least 100 such attempts, via Synergy Sports charting.
Do the Lakers have a star on the roster?
After years of neglecting the draft and the back end of the roster, the Lakers have done a better job of adding supporting talent in recent seasons. Larry Nance Jr., a late 2015 first-round pick, looks like a valuable role player (whose 16-game absence due to a bone contusion in his left knee also factored into the Lakers' swoon), while Black, a waiver pickup two seasons ago, has provided good minutes off the bench. And 2016 second-round pick Zubac shows the promise to join this group.
Still, the Lakers' years in the lottery will prove worth it only if they can develop a star from their lottery picks. Randle and Russell haven't yet shown that potential on a consistent basis, though they could certainly get there. And while it's entirely premature to render a verdict on 2016 No. 2 overall pick Brandon Ingram, who's still 19, the early returns have not been encouraging.
Ingram's hot college shooting (he shot 41.0 percent on 3s in his lone year at Duke) hasn't held up; he's making just 29.7 percent from 3-point range, seventh worst among players with at least 100 attempts, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Worse yet, Ingram is also making less than 40 percent of his 2-point attempts (39.8 percent), which would make him the 25th player in NBA history to pull off that particular double.
The inaccurate shooting has outweighed the promise Ingram has shown as a playmaker and defender. His 2.8 wins below replacement level by my WARP metric are worst in the league, as is his minus-5.4 rating in ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM).
Naturally, that's partially because Ingram has played more than the typical 19-year-old rookie, but it's hard to find players who have started so poorly and become anything more than capable reserves.
Can the Lakers find a star?
So if the Lakers don't yet have a budding star on the roster, how can they find one? This year's draft might be their last, best chance. The Lakers' first-round pick is again top-three protected, and the upside of their swoon is reducing the chances they send the Philadelphia 76ers a lottery pick this year. (The pick is unprotected next year.)
Projections using ESPN's Basketball Power Index now have the Lakers landing a top-three pick 43.7 percent of the time. At the same time, there's only so much the Lakers can do to improve their chances further. Even if they finish with the league's worst record (a long shot with the Brooklyn Nets seven games behind in the win column), the Lakers would still lose their pick more than a third of the time (with a 64.3 percent chance of keeping it).
This year's draft seems even more important for the Lakers in the context of their past seven months. First, the Lakers spent lavishly in last summer's free-agency period in a misguided effort to win now. Their four-year, $64 million deal for Mozgov looked irrationally exuberant at the time, and already the Lakers have been much better with Mozgov on the bench this season.
Meanwhile, Luol Deng has predictably struggled at small forward after revitalizing his career as an undersized 4 last season with the Miami Heat. Because Deng is 31 and Mozgov 30, those contracts only figure to get worse as both players age.
Despite overpaying Deng and Mozgov, the Lakers could still clear $20-plus million in cap space this summer by waiving Black, whose $6.7 million salary is non-guaranteed. However, the addition of the designated player rule in the new NBA collective bargaining agreement makes it less likely the league's best players change teams in free agency. Unless the Lakers can persuade Blake Griffin to change locker rooms at Staples Center (and clear the remaining necessary space to get him), they're likely going to be bidding on second-tier free agents such as Gordon Hayward of the Utah Jazz for the foreseeable future.
Adding such a player in free agency can still help fill out a contending roster, but the Lakers aren't anywhere close to having one right now. And unless they keep this year's draft pick and land a superstar, they might not get there without more time in the lottery.