Buying or Selling Lakers' Biggest Fears This Season

After an offseason of wrenching, the Los Angeles Lakers finally got to road-test the roster they rebuilt around LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Suffice it to say the ride was a little rough during their 123-109 opening-night loss to the Golden State Warriors.

The Dubs aren't the ideal opponent to face in a search for clarity. Their star power, depth and experience were always going to make it difficult for the Lakers to draw any meaningful conclusions, and a single game is as small as samples get. Still, the Lakers now have far more information about their strengths and weaknesses than they did prior to Tuesday's defeat.

Whatever shortcomings existed in theory have now been put to a 48-minute test in live action.

Maybe the good news is that this wasn't a total Murphy's Law game for the Lakers. Not everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Then again, loss No. 1 of 2022-23 revealed that several of the concerns that plagued L.A. last year have carried over into this one, and a few new ones came along with them.

Russell Westbrook came into Tuesday's game with a 30.5 percent hit rate on 3,746 career three-point attempts, and he hasn't been a consistently attentive or effective defender since he was at UCLA. The Lakers mistakenly hoped he'd embrace a different role last year, which...oops.

Russ is who he is in his 15th NBA season: a ball-dominant offensive weapon whose uncompromising style once made him great and now makes him a player who can't be traded without attaching two first-round draft picks—and maybe not even then.

On Tuesday, though, Westbrook wasn't the Lakers' biggest problem.

He finished with 19 points, 11 rebounds and three assists while hitting seven of his 13 shots from the field. Russ also had several head-down drives that overpowered Golden State's smaller defenders and even hit a three!

Of course, the Warriors spent most of the evening ignoring Russ on the perimeter, which flooded the lane with help defenders and made everything L.A. tried to do on offense harder.

More on the spacing crunch the Lakers should have seen coming later, but we can at least agree that Westbrook wasn't the only guy who failed to pose a threat from deep.

Make no mistake: Westbrook remains a brutally bad fit with this team, and one half-decent effort can't erase last year's lowlight-laden tape. For one night, he gets a pass.

Verdict: Short-term sell, long-term buy. Russ was fine on Tuesday, but he can't help this team win over a sustained stretch.

The Lakers ranked 20th in three-point accuracy last year, and their performance on Tuesday made it hard to imagine a better finish in that category this season. If you're a glass-half-full type, it's actually encouraging that they finished 10-of-40 after one of the more dispiriting starts in memory.

Four of the top five Lakers in total three-pointers made are gone, led by team leader Malik Monk, who didn't just traffic in volume. His 173 makes came with a shiny 39.1 percent hit rate.

Key addition Patrick Beverley owns a career mark of 37.8 percent, but their most prominent free-agent signee, Lonnie Walker IV, has seen his accuracy trend down three straight years, cratering at 31.4 percent last season. Matt Ryan had played in exactly one NBA game prior to Tuesday night, and he made the roster strictly on the strength of his outside shot.

Those three players combined to hit 2-of-11 from long distance, and their collective inaccuracy led to a lane overpopulated by Warriors help defenders.

Verdict: Buy. The Lakers won't be this bad all year, but their lack of shooting is, predictably, a huge problem.

Most of the good stuff came early, before the Warriors blew the game open in the second half and coasted down the stretch. But Anthony Davis looked a lot more like the two-way force who barged into "top five in the league" territory during the Lakers' title run in the 2020 bubble.

Starting at center, AD surged in the first quarter and changed the game on both ends with his length, mobility and skill. The plodding version of Davis we saw last year was gone, replaced by a guy who could slide in space, deter a ball-handler on a switch and still recover to block a 7-footer at the rim.

The desire to prove doubters wrong may be a factor for Davis, but there were several instances in which he simply looked healthier than he has at any point since the bubble. Spry, alert and quick off the floor, AD made plays that should give the Lakers hope he can reach his peak levels.

Davis finished with 27 points, six rebounds, four steals and two blocks, and the only real concern for the Lakers is that the jumper that abandoned him last season still hasn't returned. AD failed to make any of his five attempts outside the lane.

Verdict: Sell. Until the next injury crops up, Davis is back to being his best self.

New head coach Darvin Ham came in saying all the things you'd expect someone to say when taking over a team that finished 24th in defensive efficiency. He even got buy-in from LeBron James, per Chris Haynes, who relayed the following over the summer for Yahoo Sports:

"Ham agreed with James and reiterated that his main objectives are to hold everyone accountable and foster an atmosphere of selflessness, sources said. He voiced that defensive tenacity needs to be picked up all across the roster and also forewarned that players would have to play new roles and if he sensed reluctance, he wouldn’t hesitate to remove them from the game."

Cut to the Lakers snoozing on back cuts, surrendering 11 offensive boards and falling behind by as many as 27 points en route to allowing a total of 123 on opening night.

That's not the most alarming total in the modern NBA, but it overlooks that the damage could have been much worse.

Again, the Warriors are a tough test. They are often immune to even the best defenses when their system, built over a decade, starts humming and the threes fall.

Verdict: Buy. Patrick Beverley was more bark than bite, and AD couldn't cover an entire team.

This is the big one, right? The Lakers looking like they're ticketed for the play-in round at best is doubly painful because the greatest player of this (and maybe any other) generation is toiling for a team that isn't good enough to make his efforts matter.

James had some lapses on defense, which is part of the package for him in these energy-conserving days of his late 30s, but his impact on the game was still at a superstar level. He racked up 31 points, 14 boards and eight assists in 35 minutes, leading his team in all three of those categories.

He proved he could also still get out and run like a guy starting his fifth season, not his 20th.

If this Lakers team is going to make any serious noise, it'll be because James plays at least this well every night and rarely misses any action. That's a huge ask for someone with his mileage. Even then, it's hard to see how Los Angeles can get him enough consistent help from anyone but Davis.

Verdict: Buy. It shouldn't be that hard to build a team around James that can contend. But the Lakers have done it again.