Joe Paige | Sports Editor
To sum up a rough season for the Lakers they entered this season with the best odds as favorites to make it to the finals out of the western conference, after Tuesdays loss to the league best Suns the Los Angeles Lakers is officially eliminated from the entire NBA playoffs. This locks in the New Orleans Pelicans, the San Antonio Spurs, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Los Angeles Clippers into the play in. This Lakers season is catastrophic for the owners, the players, all the way to management with everyone in agreement that at the start of the season that this is a championship team. Right now, entering the post season, this is a team that is 17 games under .500, poorly constructed, has low energy and major chemistry issues. Even if you had low expectations for this team at the beginning, to be eliminated from the playoffs behind teams like the Pelicans who fought back starting the season with a 3-16 record and missed their best player for the entire season, or the Spurs who traded aways their second best player, they thought they were going to get production out of players like Kendrick Nunn, Trevor Ariza, and Wayne Ellington who ultimately turned out to be DNPs. This season will be remembered as one of the biggest busts ever in both NBA history but specifically for Lakers history as a failed super team filled with hall of fame talent to conclusively end up here having two chances to make to playoffs and missing both of them is a massive failure. When this team was initially assembled, one of their biggest comparisons was the 2013 Lakers where similarly to this season they picked up big name players in the league at the time such as Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash, etc. Due to all the excitement and talent on the roster many people chose this team as championship favorites, even during a time when The Heatles were in full swing, but as their season went on, they found themselves struggling with chemistry issues and not being able to fit well together. This 2013 season has been recognized as the one of the most disappointing seasons ever, but unlike that Lakers team this squad failed to make the playoffs even while the western conference is not as strong as it’s been in the past. There were early signs of disaster both things in and out of their control, like having Anthony Davis injured for lengths of time throughout the season, or when during the trade deadline the team made no moves even though there were clear weaknesses they needed to address. In this upcoming offseason, the Lakers have massive changes they must make to the new roster, one of those changes will be their coach Frank Vogel and some pretty creative candidates have risen to possibly take on the challenge. Many have speculated that Philadelphia, Toronto, or Utah might move on from their coaches next season as they haven’t been meeting their teams' expectations lately and potentially plan to separate from them next season, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Lakers make a run to acquire them if they were to become available in the offseason to shake up the playbook. This was a team that was originally constructed with the idea to resemble the old championship Lakers teams of the past usually having two dominate players as their core and then surrounding them with perimeter players, after seeing what trying to add a third star like Russ does to their ascendancy in the West, they’ll likely try to trade Westbrook for some more role players that can complement Anthony Davis and LeBron James. However, the search for that player may not be so easy as the Lakers have $148.9 million committed to several players for next season in LeBron, Russ, Anthony Davis, Talen Horton-Tucker, Kendrick Nunn, Stanley Johnson, and rookie forward Austin Reaves. They also don’t have any draft picks in next season’s draft because of trades and won't have a top first round pick until 2025. All eyes will be watching how this Los Angeles Lakers Squad bounces back from such a demoralizing season.
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