Lakers Don’t Get the Point

Let’s take a quick look at the Laker roster, shall we?  At center, the Lakers have Andrew Bynum, a guy who is having a great year thus far and seems like he should be a perennial All-Star as soon as this season.  At power forward, the Lakers have Pau Gasol, a two-time All-Star and one of the best all-around big men in the league.  Behind those two is Lamar Odom, arguably the best sixth man in the game and a player that would start on any other team.  At small forward, the Lakers have former All-Star and elite defender Ron Artest.  Then, of course, they have the living legend that is Kobe Bryant at shooting guard.  Finally at point guard, the Lakers have Derek Fisher and his back-ups, Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown.  Hmmm, sure seems to me like one of these things is not like the other ones.

Derek Fisher stands alone

For all of Derek Fisher’s heroics over the years, he quite simply can’t hold a candle to the rest of the Laker starters, and neither of his potential replacements have done much to suggest that they will be any better than Fish any time soon.  It isn’t that the Lakers need to have an All-Star caliber player at every position, far from it, the problem is that they don’t even have a D-League All-Star caliber player at the point right now.

So far this season the trio of Fisher, Brown and Farmar have combined to average just 12.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 3.4 steals, 3.8 turnovers and shoot 37.3% from the field and 31% from long distance.  And this is in an average of 58.8 minutes per night since the sometimes two of those three players are on the floor at the same time.  That is pretty horrid production no matter what team you are.  The question is how much longer will the Lakers let this craptastic production continue before they actually do something about it?

Is it time to give Jordan Farmar more playing time?

Five games isn’t a lot of time, but it isn’t as if the Lakers ever expected their point guards to light the world on fire this season, but still, they should be better than this.  At a minimum, Phil Jackson needs to consider shaking up the point guard rotation.  Perhaps Derek Fisher could perform better if he didn’t play so many minutes?  Fish is getting old and showing signs of wear and tear, yet he still plays a minimum of 30 minutes per game and looked totally enervated in last night’s game in Houston after playing overtime the night before.  It is time to ease up on the old dog, cut his minutes and let him maximize his energy in shorting playing time minutes.

Maybe Jordan Farmar would be more effective if he played more minutes and in longer stretches?  He is the most true of point guards the Lakers have and players like that need to get into a rhythm that can only come with consistent playing time.  Since none of the three point men are producing, I fail to see what the Lakers have to lose by letting Farmar get some extra burn for a few straight games to see if it can’t get him going.  Jordan is the weakest defender of the bunch, but it isn’t like Fisher and Brown have been locking down opposing point guards this season either.

Shannon Brown hasn’t done much of anything this year.

If the struggles continue, Phil is going to have to consider committing Laker sin and benching Derek Fisher to see if inserting Brown or Farmar as a starter can’t ignite something with the switching of roles.  If that fails, well, then I think we all know that it means drastic roster changes must ensue, and nobody wants that.

The biggest fear that these early season slumps bring up isn’t just how much the point guards will hold back the Lakers this year, but in the years to come as well.  Fisher is a free agent at the end of the season, as is Farmar and potentially Brown.  Not one of them is doing anything to make the Lakers want to bring them back, much less count on them as a the point guard of the future.

Tags: Analysis, Derek Fisher, Jordan Farmar, Mitch Kupchak, Phil Jackson, Shannon Brown