The losses have piled up for the Los Angeles Lakers, and so have their frustrations.
At 11-22, the Lakers have lost four straight games and sit in 13th in the Western Conference. And although there still is plenty of the season left, they currently sit 6.5 games out of a playoff spot.
So in lieu of a team practice Thursday, head coach Luke Walton instead decided to hold a team meeting to let the team just talk about what has been going wrong.
Lakers had a team meeting yesterday where players aired grievances about what’s happening on the court and, per Brandon Ingram, “the business of the organization.”
— Bill Oram (@billoram) December 29, 2017
“Everybody on the team said something on how they feel,” Kyle Kuzma said.
— Bill Oram (@billoram) December 29, 2017
Ingram: "Hopefully we think about what we said to each other, what we said to the coaches, and that the coaches have listened to what we said."
— Bill Oram (@billoram) December 29, 2017
Yikes.
To be fair, the Lakers are loaded with young talent in Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram (all of whom are younger than 22), among others. So it’s no surprise there’s going to be some growing pains.
And as CBS Sports points out, the business side of things comment from Ingram very well could point toward the Lakers’ transparency about the desire to acquire a big free agent, which of course would come at the expense of some of those younger players.