The tough losses continue to pile up for the Los Angeles Lakers as frustration mounts for head coach Byron Scott. While the Lakers are trying to celebrate the career of Kobe Bryant while developing young talent like D'Angelo Russell and Julius Randle to carry the franchise for the future. The latter is not going as planned and now Scott is voicing his frustration over the youth on the team.
The Lakers entered the game against the Milwaukee Bucks with a much younger starting lineup. Randle, Russell, Bryant, Roy Hibbert and Jordan Clarkson were the starting five. Three of those players are in their first and second years in the league. This is the lineup that Scott intends to go with for the remainder of the season and as a result the team was losing by 28 points at one time in the game. They also gave up 54 points in the paint through three quarters alone. Scott is blaming the immaturity of the starting lineup.
"We're not taking this as serious as we should as a basketball team," Scott said, via the Orange County Register. "And that comes with youth. Our young guys got to learn that they have to be much better prepared as far as understanding what they have to do night in and night out."
The frustration from Scott comes just a day after the head coach announced that Russell would remain a starter alongside Clarkson and Randle for the rest of the season. Bill Oram of the Orange County Register reported the rookie point guard would be getting the nod after Scott said it was time he got to learn with the starters. That did not go as planned in the first night against the Bucks, but Russell stressed that he, Randle and Clarkson simply need more time together to grow and learn from one another.
"We can grow. We can play a lot tighter," Russell said, via ESPN.com. "There's a time when you can learn from each other as far as when one or them or myself mess up, we can figure out how to grow or we can watch film together. We should've done it earlier in the year, but I guess we were caught up in different ways. We can really take this time to grow together."
The Lakers have plenty of frustrating games ahead of them. Scott is hoping that the younger players can at least begin to improve as they are expected to be the faces of the franchise next year.
