Heading into the 2018-19 season, there was an expectation that the Los Angeles Lakers would take some time to jell together with their revamped roster led by LeBron James.
However, it appears that team president Magic Johnson has ramped up the pressure a bit on head coach Luke Walton to turn the team around a bit sooner than originally anticipated, according to Adrian Wojnarowski and Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
In a meeting on Tuesday, following a winless two-game trip, Los Angeles Lakers president Magic Johnson admonished coach Luke Walton for the team’s sluggish start to the season, league sources told ESPN.
Johnson’s cutting appraisal elevated an already acute awareness within the Lakers coaching staff that there are intense and immediate pressures on Walton to deliver the franchise a winner in short order.
Los Angeles is out to a bit of a slow start out of the gate to begin the season holding a 3-5 record through the first eight games. This has seen them come off a winless two-game road trip that has kept them under the .500 mark in the early goings. The Lakers have should plenty of promise offensively, but it has been their lack of consistency defensively and late in games that have worked against them at times.
The team has had a chance to nearly secure a win each game this year, but it has been their struggles to finish out the game that has put them in this early rut. Throughout this process, there has been a common thread of patience with the entire situation but it has begun to reach a point of pushing forward toward being considered a legitimate playoff team.
What this does more than anything else is put more pressure on Walton to push the team to plenty of success on the court or he could soon be without a job.
Bob Garcia IV
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