With the Lakers below .500 and failing to draw sellout crowds, the disappointments in this season’s team are easy to spot. Sometimes, you don’t even have to look.
Take early in the second half when Dwight Howard spent one second joking about a missed Portland free throw and the very next knocking a rebound out of Russell Westbrook’s hands. Or when Westbrook felt a Trail Blazer on his back and saw a wall of defenders in front of him, coughing up the ball as he pushed into certain failure. The Lakers were slow to get back, and the Trail Blazers capitalized on the numbers advantage and hit a 3-pointer.
Those were some of the more embarrassing mistakes Wednesday, a rotating list of errors that have kept the Lakers from coming close to any level of sustainable success.
