After the season for the Los Angeles Lakers reached embarrassing new lows with Saturday night’s to the Phoenix Suns, the time came for the Lakers to address their own issues with the media.
Obviously, they didn’t have a lot of rosy things to say about the loss after losing to the worst team in the league as they now find themselves 4.5 games out of the playoffs with little over a month to go in the season.
While the Lakers have been plagued by injuries to key players all season, the truth of the matter is they’ve missed opportunities all season as well. Anybody who has followed them closely knows this and Rachel Nichols broke down just how big of a difference missing the easiest opportunities would have made earlier this week.
On Saturday night, it was LeBron’s turn to address the struggles for the Lakers that are both consistent and obvious.
“I mean, listen, we obviously, we needed this game for obvious reasons,” James said. “We wanted to play well. At times we played well. I think we was always together at times as well. Had the right mind frame of what we were trying to accomplish tonight. It’s just unfortunate with the opportunity that we had, and we haven’t been able to seize that opportunity.”
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“I’m not here to harp on the negativity or the negative. We had opportunities,” he said. “Yeah, we could’ve played better here, played better there. That’s been throughout the whole season. But right now it’s a tough loss.”
That’s been throughout the whole season. Although James is usually a player who prides himself on bringing positivity to the workplace, it’s never looked more like this is something he’s unable to get the Lakers out of.
As it stands, the first season of LeBron in L.A. will go down as a major disappointment. Not even James’ presence has helped lift them to a winning record since his return from injury, falling to 4-7 after last night’s loss.
Granted, many of the issues that plagued the Lakers this season have little to do with LeBron. While the Anthony Davis trade saga may have manifested itself in negative ways for the Lakers moral, the overall addition of James still should have made them a threat. All this season has done is fuel more questions about the decisions made at the top of the Lakers power structure.
Their owner Jeanie Buss is blaming the media for the Davis fiasco. Magic Johnson’s hiring was questioned almost immediately given that it essentially happened with no interview process and the choices on who to sign this season by he and Rob Pelinka was questionable from the very beginning. Yes, they wanted to maintain cap space for this summer, but they also wasted a year of LeBron’s remaining greatness in the process.
