Los Angeles Lakers may need to trust the untrustworthy during the bubble

Los Angeles Lakers are gambling in the bubble

With teams firmly in the Orlando bubble, we can finally say, “the NBA is back.” The Los Angeles Lakers bubble team has the two oddest additions for this league restart. After Avery Bradley opted out of rejoining the team, The Lakers lost a key guard in their rotation.

The Lakers responded by bringing in and signing JR Smith. After they had just signed Dion Waiters in March, a week before COVID-19 shut the league down. These signings are odd because they are so similar.

Can Dion and JR change for the Los Angeles Lakers?

Both Dion and JR are two guards, and both have essentially not played basketball for close to a year. JR Smith was in exile after the Cleveland Cavaliers could not find a trade for him over a year ago. The last time JR Smith set foot on an NBA court was in November 2018.

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Dion Waiters’ most notable event this NBA season was having a panic attack after ingesting too many THC gummies on a team plane – allegedly. In response, the Miami Heat suspended him for most of the season and eventually traded him to Memphis, who bought him out before he could suit up.

Both of these two lost souls have found their way on to a title favorite in the Los Angeles Lakers. With Rajon Rondo breaking his hand and Avery Bradley no longer with the team, the Lakers are down to four guards they commonly use in their rotations: Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green and the seldom-used Quinn Cook.

With LeBron James running the point, many would assume JR and Dion Waiters would not see the floor much. After winning a championship with LeBron in Cleveland, JR Smith became a net negative on the court – he was a zero Value Over Replacement player during the 2016-17 season and a -0.6 VORP player during the 2017-18 season.

Dion has not been better over the years either, he has not played over 50 games since the 2015-16 season. Dion Waiters has been a consistently poor shooter his whole career, posting lifetime splits of 41.2 percent shooting from the field, 34.8 percent shooting from 3-point range, and 69.2 percent shooting from the free-throw line.

The risk of playing either one of them for any crucial minutes during the Lakers playoff run seems high. While many would say these two will not see the floor, you have to question why they were signed, to begin with. The Lakers could have most likely found specialist players, who either had size, defense, or 3-point shooting. Instead, they chose two players many have given up on.

The last image in fans’ minds of JR Smith is him forgetting what the score was in the 2018 NBA Finals. Dion Waiters has had headline after headline this season about how he has been nothing but trouble for the Heat.

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On the surface, you’d think that neither of these players offer any leadership or stability to this Los Angeles Lakers roster. If this was a Disney movie, instead of just the games being played at Disney, maybe they could find their peak form and help the Lakers win it all. This is reality and the Lakers’ luck might run out if they are forced to gamble on JR and Dion.

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