Los Angeles Lakers Need Better Offensive Balance or They Will Miss the Playoffs

In case you hadn't noticed, the Los Angeles Lakers are 12-9 and currently in eighth place in the Western Conference standings.

If the playoffs started today, the eighth-seeded Lakers would be matched up with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the playoffs.  

Can you say first-round exit?

The Lakers are quite simply, a bad basketball team that appears to be getting worse as the season wears on.

This is a team that went 13 straight games without breaking the 100-point mark (a new franchise record during the shot clock era) before scoring 106 points in last night's win over Minnesota.

This is a team that replaced Lamar Odom with Josh McRoberts.

This is a team that lost to an Andrew Bogut-less Milwaukee Bucks team by 11 points.

This is by far the worst Lakers team in the Pau Gasol era and it's really not even close.

So what gives?  

It all comes down to shot distribution, and when you've got one player who has accounted for 484 of the 1,572 shot attempts (30.8 percent), you become very easy to guard as a team.

Kobe Bryant is taking way too many shots and in his attempt to beat teams one-on-five, he is failing miserably.

Kobe has taken 221 more shots than Pau Gasol (263) and 292 more shots than Andrew Bynum (192). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this makes absolutely zero sense when Kobe shoots 45.5 percent from the field while Gasol is shooting 50.6 percent and Bynum is at 53.7 percent.

Gasol and Bynum are both averaging 16 points per game; combine the two and they are outscoring Kobe 32 points to 30.  That's not how a so-called "Big Three" is supposed to work, folks.

There is no reason for Gasol and Bynum to not be averaging 20 points per contest.  The shot distribution in Miami is a perfect example—LeBron takes 19 shots, Wade takes 17 and Bosh gets 15.

In LA, Kobe is taking 24 shots, Gasol is getting 13 and Bynum 12.  See the difference?  You can't have your best player taking twice as many shots as the next two guys in line; it's just not a recipe for success in today's NBA.

Kobe's defiance is destroying the Lakers once again—he's going to go down in flames and he's taking this team with him.  

Now I will admit that things were a little better in Minnesota last night.  Even though Kobe managed to take 29 shots, at least Pau and Andrew were able to match him with 29 combined shots between the two of them.  

Kobe was able to make 14 of his 29 attempts while Bynum and Gasol combined to make 19.

The question remains, how much longer can the Lakers go on like this?  How much longer can they continue to have Kobe take as many shots as their two soon-to-be All-Star big men combined?

So how can the Lakers better balance their offense?  Well, I know it sounds simple, but they need to play inside-out and they need to force feed the ball into the post from the opening tip.

Bynum and Gasol should never combine for fewer than 30 attempts and Kobe shouldn't be taking more than 20 on any given night.  

Especially when you consider where Kobe's shots are coming from on the court and their degree of difficulty versus Pau and Andrew doing most of their work in the paint.

That's my magic formula folks, instead of the big three's shot chart looking like this—24-13-12, it should look like this—20-15-15.  

Less shots for Kobe and more shots for the Bynum and Gasol, it's the only way things are going to get any better in Laker Land.

After the Lakers beat the Bobcats at home on Tuesday (don't even say it), they will improve to 13-9 with a third of the season officially in the books—on pace for a 39-27 final record.  

That record will be good enough to get into the playoffs and it might even be good enough for a top four seed with the way things are currently jumbled up in the Western Conference standings today.

That said, is this the kind of attitude we've officially resorted to as Lakers fans now?  Just hoping to have a good enough record to get into the playoffs and maybe having home court for the first round?

Unfortunately, this is the new reality in Laker Land.  The rest of the league has caught up with the Lakers through free agency and the draft, while the Lakers haven't made any significant upgrades to their roster since 2008.  (I'm considering the whole Ron Artest for Trevor Ariza fiasco to be a wash)

So unless GM Mitch Kupchak (who is now having to deny rumors that he is about to call it quits) has one or two more moves up his sleeve in this lockout-shortened season, we can pretty much call it wrap for 2012.

I hate to be the one to break it to you Laker fans, but there are anywhere from five to 10 teams in the NBA right now with better personnel from top to bottom than what you will find on the current Lakers roster.

What's that saying I hear every single athlete use in every single interview when they have absolutely no idea how to answer the question that's just been posed?

"It is what it is".