Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 91 days 5 hours 2 minutes
And should the Lakers look inward for better management talent?
Rob Pelinka said they have an obligation to James and his legacy... but what is it?
The 2022-23 Lakers are in deep trouble, but are also, by all indications, in a holding pattern when it comes to making deals to try and rescue this season. As they head into Tuesday's tilt with Orlando seven games under .500 and staring down a long stretch without Anthony Davis, the prospect of another disaster of a season has people asking whether the Lakers are wasting the best/rest of LeBron James's career...
It's not going well. Not at all.
Coming off one of the season's more frustrating losses Friday at home to Charlotte, the Lakers kicked off a five game road trip with a Christmas Day tilt in Dallas. It started well. It didn't finish that way. An 11-point halftime lead was erased in humiliating fashion, as the Mavericks outscored the Lakers by 30 points in the third quarter. 30. 51-21. That's a one-quarter point differential that hadn't been seen in decades, and it was enough to effectively bury the Lakers...
The Lakers finish out the year with (stop us if you've heard this before) basically a must-win home game against a lousy Charlotte team tonight, then a very winnable road trip against Dallas (a .500 team), Orlando (a bad team), Miami (a .500 team), Atlanta (a .500 team) and Charlotte (as noted, lousy). Are they gonna sweep? Get swept? Split? No idea, but as far as NBA road trips go, this is about as favorable as they come. And the Lakers are getting a bit of good news, too...
None of them, it should be noted, are terribly appealing.
The shorthanded Lakers lost Wednesday in Sacramento, as Laker Nation waits for definitive AD news...
Sometimes no news is good news. But other times, no news is nerve-wracking, and sets off all sorts of alarm bells. Like when the news nobody is getting is about Anthony Davis and his health, following a foot injury last week that seemed innocent enough at the time. The Lakers were reportedly going to deliver an update on Monday... and we all went to bed Wednesday night without anything. Not even the now-standard "will be re-evaluated in X number of weeks." There's not even an official diagnosis...
The Lakers, definitely without Anthony Davis and possibly without Austin Reaves and Russell Westbrook, face a Sacramento squad Wednesday that might be without star center Domantas Sabonis and veteran forward Harrison Barnes. So maybe the Lakers catch a break, maybe they don't, but either way the game represents the changing nature of the Western Conference, where upstarts like Sacramento, New Orleans and Utah are making unexpected noise early...