It's amazing that even after a game where Fisher and Blake played the point guard role pretty much the ideal way for this current Mike Brown Offense--9 points, 13 assists and strong D on John Wall--that the refrain from many Laker fans was still "we lost because of our point guards!!" Unless Deron is playing for the vet minimum next year, the Laker aren't going to easily find a point guard who is more productive than that with their current assets any time soon. No, the thing that the Lakers are really missing is pretty much the exact opposite of what a point guard should do: consistent offensive force from the bench.

This season, a lot is made about how inconsistent the Lakers are. But the truth is, they're rather consistently good at home and rather consistently bad on the road. One of the reasons they're so bad on the road is that they have certain lineups that just don't produce anything. Generally these are the lineups that play when Kobe and Pau sit, at the start of the second quarter and the tail end of third. It's not unusual for these lineups to be -10 during any given road game. These lineups struggle to get Bynum the ball, largely because the defense is able to sag and swarm around Bynum at all times. So when Bynum does get the ball, it often is in a place where not only is it difficult for him to score, but he is prone to turn the ball over (or hold the ball so long before passing that it forces a bad shot). Bynum is not Shaq, he's not David Robinson: he's not a very good passer. That normally wouldn't be a huge deal, most big men aren't very good passers and can't score like Bynum can (and please note, I'm not blaming Bynum. These lineups don't play particularly well with only Kobe or only Pau either). It's the role of the team to force the defense to put less pressure on Bynum.

What needs to happen to make Bynum's life easier, is someone else on the floor needs to be at least slightly an offensive threat, to cause defenses to think twice about focusing so much on Bynum. At home, usually someone from the Lakers bench steps up and becomes this secondary threat. While these units still aren't very good most nights, they're mediocre enough to keep a decent lead. On the road, though, these players are putrid.

It really wouldn't even take that much to make the Lakers bench better. They probably only need a guy who can consistently get 5-8 points every night on the road next to Bynum to make the Lakers a much better team.

The Lakers can worry about the point guard of the future in the offseason, in the draft, where good PGs are plentiful and often come out of nowhere. Right now, what the Lakers' need more than anything is a replacement level scorer.