Colin Cowherd On Whether The Lakers Are Legit
Colin Cowherd offered his two cents on whether the Los Angeles Lakers are legit following their Game 4 blowout win over the Portland Trail Blazers.
Cowherd has been something of a doubter when it comes to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference up to this point. That continued on Tuesday, when he argued that it remains to be seen whether LA could continue playing well for the duration of the postseason.
The Lakers looked like a championship team last night, but is it sustainable?@ColinCowherd reacts to Game 4 win: pic.twitter.com/ZKlHrgUTN3
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) August 25, 2020
“Now, they had size. They had length. They played defense,” he said on his show.
“The chemistry was good. The stars were unbelievable. But here’s the problem. They’ve had all those things in the bubble. Now let’s be clear. Portland waved the white flag…Portland gave up.”
And because the Blazers gave up, in Cowherd’s mind at least, the dominance displayed by LA is not indicative of things to come.
To be clear, he does not believe the Lakers will lose their first round series.
“The series is over,” Cowherd acknowledged.
The Fox Sports host simply believes that the Lakers have a lot of weaknesses that the Blazers were incapable of exploiting.
“This was the Lakers doing everything right on the same night Portland literally waved the white flag,” Cowherd continued.
“So you can’t take much from the game.”
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Colin Cowherd Doesn’t Trust the Lakers’ Depth
Cowherd’s biggest gripe with the Lakers is that he doesn’t like the pieces that surround the team’s two biggest stars.
“There is an issue with the Lakers,” he said.
“They have all these components to be a championship team. And they’ve had all of them in the bubble every night. Length and size and a front court and LeBron [James] is awesome and [Anthony Davis] is mostly awesome and they’ve got an experienced coach and a lot of years in this league.
“But what happened last night? What happened last night is what hasn’t happened in the bubble until last night. All the other guys shot well. KCP shot well and Danny Green shot well and Kyle Kuzma shot well,” he continued.
“That’s the problem. That is the issue. If you look at two numbers for the Lakers this year, they’re 29-0 when they’ve shot 50 percent. That’s not on LeBron and AD. AD shot 50 percent for the season. LeBron shot 49.5 percent.
“They’re always shooting 50 percent. They’re 20-1 when they shoot 40 percent on threes. The issue with the Lakers, they’ve had all of these championship components the entire bubble. The size, the length, the experience, LeBron, AD, a veteran coach. It’s the other guys. That’s the Lakers’ issue.”
Cowherd certainly isn’t the first person to highlight the Lakers’ lack of play makers outside of James and Davis, but that hasn’t prevented the team from achieving all of the things that it has ultimately achieved this year.
Again, this is a group that finished atop the Western Conference. Despite not having a clear-cut “third best player,” the Lakers have won three straight outings over what was objectively the hottest team in the NBA heading into the playoffs.
Yes, LA plays extremely well when they shoot well. And yes, shooting less than 50 percent inevitably leads to worse results than shooting more than 50 percent, but that is hardly breaking news.
The Lakers may struggle later on in the postseason, but for now they are doing everything anyone could expect out of them. Cowherd is certainly entitled to his opinion, but it does seem like he is grasping at straws at this point.
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Charles Kruger has been credentialed to cover two Super Bowls, four NBA Finals, and one World Series. A 20-year veteran in the sports world, he has sources spanning the NBA, MLB, NFL, UFC and NASCAR. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Calif., he is Game 7’s go-to source for rumors surrounding the Lakers, Clippers and Dodgers.
