On Wednesday night, the Lakers’ three-game winning streak was snapped when a severely shorthanded version of the team went into San Antonio and fell to a nearly full-strength Spurs side. The Lakers competed
hard and kept it close through the first half and were still within single digits heading into the fourth quarter, but their lack of depth and shot creation behind Luka Dončić ultimately did them in.
With sole possession of the Western Conference’s second seed at “stake” — for at least one day in the ever-shifting chase for seeding — the loss was somewhat damaging from a standings perspective, if damaging is even the right word for an early January conversation on seeding.
Still, it would have been a nice feather in the Lakers’ cap and served as a good reminder that the team has actually played well from the perspective of wins and losses, which, I suppose, is the only metric that really matters when determining who is playing well.
Although, you might not exactly know that the Lakers had played well this season based on the general perception of them from a national discourse.
For example, here’s ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins talking about JJ Redick
Perkins trying to argue that a coach can lose a locker room when the team’s two superstars are still in lockstep with that coach is comical. As a career role player who understands the dynamics of locker rooms and the leverage star players have, I’d have thought Perkins would know this better than most.
That said, I think it’s even more comical that you could argue a coach has lost the locker room when they’re winning 65% of their games while also dealing with the number of injuries this team is right now and, really, has all season.
Perkins, of course, is not alone. While his particular penchant for hyperbole is a specific type of conceit, I would argue that more broadly, the conversations around the Lakers do often take on a tone that approaches his type of analysis rather than one that is more positive or, at least, more balanced.
But why is that? Why is what the Lakers have achieved consistently viewed through a lens of all the things they are not or their flaws rather than what they’ve actually accomplished on the court?
Heading into Friday’s game against the Bucks, the Lakers are fifth in the West, sandwiched between the Timberwolves (25-13) and the Rockets (22-12) and boasting the same number of losses as the Nuggets (25-12). These are teams universally believed to be contenders who can make a deep playoff run and, in the case of Denver and Houston, to be in the inner circle of title contenders who have a legitimate chance to take down the Thunder and win it all.
And while I understand playoff equity is not the same as regular season success, it’s not like the Lakers are rivaling them in the regular season while boasting their full team and playing their best basketball. No, the Lakers have essentially the same record as these teams while dealing with as many, or more, injuries than any other team with a good record, while also clearly suffering through the lack of cohesion and limitations that come from having so many guys in and out of the lineup.
Take Wednesday’s game in San Antonio as an example. The Lakers’ starting lineup vs. the Spurs was the 19th different iteration that JJ Redick has deployed this year and he was again without multiple regular starters, including both LeBron James and Austin Reaves. For the season, that was LeBron’s 17th missed game already and the sixth consecutive of 12 total games Reaves has missed, to say nothing of Rui Hachimura also missing time or the games prior to this one in which Dončić was not available.
I could on and on, but I digress.
To put the team’s injury challenges and resulting lineup uncertainty in perspective, the T’Wolves starting lineup leads the NBA with 360 minutes and there are 50 total five-man lineups around the NBA that have more minutes than the Lakers top used group — a unit that has compiled just 85 minutes in the team’s 35 games to this point.
I don’t bring this up in an attempt to bring pity on the Lakers circumstances — not that it would, even if that was my intent — but, rather, to again question why the Lakers aren’t viewed as one of the more positive stories this season and/or viewed as a team that, once they do have their full team together, has a chance to make the same sort of noise that other proposed contenders with similar records are purported to be able to make.
I say that somewhat tongue in cheek because I am a realist and do understand the Lakers’ flaws. They’ve not proven they can be a good enough defensive team to this point and the injuries they have suffered could just as easily be looked at as the natural occurrence of a team that relies on a superstar who doubles as the oldest player in the league and a young superstar who has dealt with calf injuries and been dogged by conditioning concerns.
Of course, on the flip side, both players are also major playoff risers whose singular brilliancies have collapsed opponents in multiple postseasons and whose brain power and collective problem-solving is nearly unrivaled. So, maybe with those two in tow, the Lakers can be a high-level playoff team?
Right now, though, this is less about the playoff viability of the team and more about the general feeling of what type of season the Lakers have had so far and why it’s actually worth being happy over. I understand that negativity sells more than the alternative and the Lakers, like the Cowboys in the NFL or the Yankees in the MLB, have a historical cachet and global fanbase that encourages a diversity of takes that will, to put it kindly, animate those fans in a manner that makes them want to consume content.
I also understand that it’s hard to separate the Lakers brand from the championship chase, which leads folks to fall back to that framing when discussing the team.
That said, the Lakers currently have the sixth-best record in the NBA. This is the same team that many of these same prognosticators picked to be the seventh- or eighth-best team in their conference.
And while there’s lots of season left to play and things could always change, right now, the Lakers are actually a good story! They’ve been hammered by injuries and all they’ve done is win nearly two-thirds of their games through almost half the season.
No one’s asking to anoint them the favorites to win the title or anything like that. But if we could maybe just start treating them as though they’re a good team that is actually finding ways to win games they probably shouldn’t and position themselves well to actually make the run no one thinks they will, that would be okay too?
Or maybe we put another blowhard on TV saying how they should trade LeBron or Austin Reaves for role players? Yeah, let’s do that instead.
You can follow Darius on BlueSky at @forumbluegold and find more of his Lakers coverage on the Laker Film Room Podcast.
