Let the skepticism begin!

The Los Angeles Lakers went winless in the preseason, but everyone was like, “Oh, don’t worry! They’ll turn it on when the regular season starts.”

Now they are 0-2 and looking like a team that doesn’t know how to play together. The Dirk Nowitzki-less Dallas Mavericks handed them a 99-91 loss as Dwight Howard‘s debut saw him miss 11-14 free throws. Steven Nash — the man thought to engineer this high powered offense —  looked every bit of a man nearing his 40s as he was thoroughly outplayed by Darren Collison. Dallas led by as many as 16 points and never really looked back.

That’s okay, they’ll only get better…right?

Wrong.

Their second game of the season wasn’t much better. The Portland Trail Blazers handed the Lakers a 116-106 beatdown where the score wasn’t nearly indicative of how bad they were outplayed. The Blazers led by as many as 19 points as Nicholas Batum and rookie Damian Lillard scorched them for 26 and 22 points respectively. More important was the fact that Nash was outplayed again and subsequently went out with an injury. Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant had great individual performances, but the chemistry is still lacking.

So is there need to panic? Not really.

Remember when the Miami Heat struggled out of the gate? The reigning NBA champs lost the season opener to the Boston Celtics and stumbled to a 9-8 start. Everyone screamed that the experiment was destined to fail, but all it took was some time and chemistry to get the ball rolling. They finished 58-24 and lost in the NBA finals. At the end of the day, they needed time to gel. These Lakers are no different. It’s not just the tandem of Pau Gasol, Bryant, Howard and Nash that need to figure it out, it’s the rest of the team that has to know their role and play it to a tee.

Give them a minute. Maybe a few weeks. But don’t begin hitting the panic button just yet.

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