Russell Westbrook has run out of answers for what ails the Lakers, so he’s asking some friends for help.
The Los Angeles Lakers are a bad basketball team.
They’re bad at offense. They’re bad at defense. They’re ranked in the bottom ten in both of those categories. And with just seven games left in the season and sitting in 11th place in the Western Conference after officially falling out of play-in range with a lifeless loss to the Mavericks in Dallas, it’s pretty clear taht everyone involved realizes how hopeless all this is, and is also experienced enough to know that they don’t have the answers to fix what ails them.
So after this latest low point, the ever-inventive Russell Westbrook decided to ask for some outside input during his postgame interview on Tuesday night. And hey, the strategy makes sense. After all, the Lakers clearly haven’t had a lot of success figuring things out, and we’ve long been advocating for the organization to bring in outside voices, so hey, Russ may as well check to see if Brad Turner of The Los Angeles Times has any ideas of how they can solve all their issues.
Here is a transcript of the memorable postgame exchange between the two men in Dallas:
Turner: Russ now you guys are actually the 11th seed, out of the play-in game. What changes going forward?
Westbrook: “Nothing man, nothing.”
And why is that?
“Because it doesn’t. What does it change? We’ve still got games to play. Other teams still got games to play. We’ve still got to play teams that are above us in the play-in. It doesn’t change much... What do you think should change?”
I mean, something.
“Okay, that’s obvious, what do you think should change?”
Winning. Winning games. Playing hard. You asked the question, I gave you an answer.
“That’s fine. Do you have the answer to winning?”
I’m not up there playing. You give me your answer of what you think you should do.
(laughs) “Exactly. I don’t have to answer. Exactly.”
If you don’t have it, you’re out there, I can’t help you.
“So why are you asking me and thinking I have the answer and you don’t have it either?”
Well but I don’t play, Russell. I wan’t to get the information from you so that I can...
“I’m only one person, champ. It’s a team game. So I don’t have an answer. You can give me your answer.”
I don’t have it. But I’m asking the pro who know the game, play the game, what you think you can do to make it better.
“Yeah. For sure. No I respect that. Y’all got that? All right, cool.”
The video — and Turner’s reaction to being FaceTimed to talk about it on Spectrum SportsNet — is the latest example of why he is widely considered the nicest and coolest man in Los Angeles sports media.
this is tremendous television pic.twitter.com/HG0SzJefdN
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) March 30, 2022
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like BT had many ideas for the Lakers beyond just winning games and playing harder, neither of which the team has shown much interest in doing outside of a handful of games this year. But hey, maybe him recommending it will convince the organization it’s worth an extended shot.
Hopefully Russ can take it back to the locker room, run it by his teammates and see if they want to try it next game.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.
