Life in Los Angeles isn't getting any easier for LeBron James, who has described his team's penchant for repeating the same mistakes over and over as "insanity".
The Lakers lost 124-120 on the road against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday night, despite LeBron's 29 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
Brandon Ingram and Kyle Kuzma provided good support for LeBron, scoring 24 and 19 points respectively but Lonzo Ball struggled, scoring just four points on 2-for-6 from the field.
The result saw the Timberwolves overtake the Lakers in the Western Conference standings, leaving the 16-time NBA champion with a 2-5 record. The Lakers got off to a 0-3 start before winning two games in a row, but the feel-good factor generated by those consecutive Ws appears to have evaporated quickly.
After the game, LeBron was clearly frustrated by the lack of progress and did not hide his feelings.
"We gotta get better," he was quoted as saying by Ryan Ward of ClutchPoints.
"We know that. We talk about patience, but we can't have a recurrence of the same thing. Doing the same things over and over and over again and expecting a different result. That's insanity. We have to continue to get better. We continue to have the same mistakes."
LeBron: "We gotta get better. We know that. We talk about patience, but we can't have recurrence of the same thing. Doing the same things over & over & over again & expecting a different result. That's insanity. We have to cont to get better. We cont to have the same mistakes."
— Ryan Ward (@RyanWardLA) October 30, 2018
LeBron's frustration is understandable, as the Lakers' season so far has not gone to plan. Despite being ranked by some bookmakers as the fourth-favorites to win the title, right now the Lakers look like a team that could struggle to reach the playoffs.
Purple and yellow jerseys have been absent from the postseason since 2013 and LeBron's arrival in California this summer was supposed to catapult the 16-time NBA champions back into the upper echelon of the basketball world.
That, however, looks still a fair distance away as the Lakers continue to adjust to LeBron, much as the four-time MVP continues to adjust to them. In Kuzma, Ball, Ingram and Josh Hart the Lakers have one of the most promising young cores in the league but since LeBron's arrival the approach has changed from "building for the future" to "win as quickly as possible"—and the Lakers need time.
While in the offseason LeBron and Magic Johnson, the Lakers' president of basketball operations, both warned against expecting too much of this team this campaign, neither is likely to tolerate mediocrity for too long.
At the same time, drawing conclusions with 75 games of the regular season left is premature at best and a number of other teams—cf. Oklahoma, Washington, Dallas, New York, Houston and Cleveland—have started slowly.
Additionally, LeBron's team can notoriously be slow starters, particularly in his first season. In 2010-11, in his first season in Miami, the Heat were 9-8 after the first 17 games even though LeBron could count on the likes of Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.
Four years later, LeBron's first season back in Cleveland began in similar fashion, as a Cavaliers team boasting Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love alongside him won just once in the opening four matches and then found itself 5-7.
The Lakers have enough time and talent to address their issues and now have the luxury of playing four of the next six games on home court, starting with a matchup against the Mavericks on Wednesday.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Dan Cancian is currently a reporter for Newsweek based in London, England. Prior to joining Newsweek in January 2018, he ... Read more
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