The Los Angeles Lakers’ season is mercifully coming to an end sometime soon, as the team needs a miracle at this point to get into the play-in tournament and have any shot at playing postseason basketball. With the writing on the wall, it’s hard not to look at what went wrong for them this season, and earlier this week, Anthony Davis posited that injuries were just too much for them to overcome.
“I think the biggest thing that I think about personally is what we could have been, had we stayed healthy all year,” Davis said, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “What could we have been. … Guys feel like, ‘OK, what could we have been if I was healthy all year, [LeBron James] was healthy, [Kendrick] Nunn was healthy.’ You think about those things. We put this team together and it looked good on paper, but we haven’t had a chance to reach that potential with guys in and out of the lineup.
“So the most frustrating part of this season is not being sure of what we could have been.”
In the eyes of Stephen A. Smith, a whole heck of a lot more goes into this than just the injuries. Smith was asked about this Lakers season and explained that he thinks this entire year was a top-down failure, and if the team remained healthy, it would be around-.500 and “destined to go home in the first round.”
Stephen A GOES OFF on the Lakers organization
“The Lakers are a national basketball atrocity, let's just call it what it is.” pic.twitter.com/IGpgKOW40O
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) April 5, 2022
“Let’s just get this out of the way, please: The Lakers are a national basketball atrocity,” Smith said. “Let’s just call it what it is. They’re an atrocity, and it starts from the top-down. It starts from Jeanie Buss allowing Linda Rambis to have power, it goes from there and disintegrates down to Rob Pelinka, who feels that as long as you’re wearing the purple and gold and you’re a Laker, you’ll be just fine. It sits further down to Frank Vogel, who lost the team because they stopped listening to him a long time ago.”
Smith then called out LeBron James, not for what he does on the basketball court, but for how he throws his weight around behind the scenes.
“You coulda had Ty Lue as your coach, but you caved into management when they wanted you to keep Jason Kidd,” Smith said. “You coulda had somebody else, like a Jason Kidd, but you didn’t, you wanted him on your bench, but you were afraid to let him be the head coach. You settles for Frank Vogel, let Jason Kidd go to Dallas, and now, he’s a coach of the year candidate. Everywhere you go shows ineptitude, shows inefficiency, shows an embarrassment of arrogance that is undeniable. They are a basketball atrocity, and Anthony Davis can point to all the injuries he wants to. It’s legit, but it doesn’t negate the fact you still wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
The Lakers will try to keep their slim hopes of making the play-in alive on Tuesday night against the Suns. James will not play due to injury.
Source: https://uproxx.com/dimemag/stephen-a-smith-lakers-rant-national-basketball-atrocity-video/
