Injuries aside, the Los Angeles Lakers were an incredibly flawed team this past season, and it was obvious. They had too many ball-handlers, very limited floor spacing and questionable depth.
Lakers guard Josh Hart echoed those sentiments on The No Chill Podcast, saying that Los Angeles had poor roster construction during the 2018-19 campaign:
“Our team, how it was built, I understood the concept of it, but the chemistry was just so different because you had so many dudes that are ball dominant,” said Hart, via Christian Rivas of Silver Screen & Roll.
“You had ‘Zo, you had Rondo, you had Lance, you had ‘Bron, so it’s like just those four right there, you know ‘Bron is going to have the ball and is going to play 30, 35 minutes. So you have that, but then if you play the other guys you don’t have the spacing around it.”
As a result, Hart was forced to become a shooter and struggled mightily with his unexpected role. He shot just 33.6 percent from 3-point range this past campaign.
“That was the biggest thing with me last year,” Hart added. “I trained for what I thought was going to be my role, but then we got ‘Bron, and it was kinda like my summer work… it switched up. You go in thinking you’re gonna take more of a role in being more of a playmaker or a decision maker, or something like that, handle the ball a little bit more, to being just a shooter. Or something like that.”
On the season overall, Hart averaged 7.8 points and 3.7 rebounds over 25.6 minutes per game while making 40.7 percent of his field-goal attempts and 68.8 percent of his free throws — a major step back from what was a surprisingly good rookie campaign the year prior.
Hopefully for Hart and the Lakers' sake in general, the front office does a better job of putting together a more competent roster for 2019-20.