Rob Pelinka hopes Lakers get a chance to play for title

LeBron James believes that his body was rounding third base as his Los Angeles Lakers had just completed a weekend sweep of the two teams thought to be the greatest threats to their hopes to an NBA Championship, the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers, before blowing their final game before the NBA hiatus to the Brooklyn Nets. But despite that close loss thanks to an Anthony Davis jumper that rimmed off and a missed lay-up from LeBron, the Lakers passed more than enough tests through the season as they had a commanding lead for the No. 1 spot in the West and had a chance to catch the Bucks, trailing by only three games.

It’s for all of these reasons that Rob Pelinka’s statements to reporters on a conference call Wednesday about hoping to finish the season are totally understandable, given the special season the Lakers had, according to Tania Ganguli of the L.A. Times.

“It’s almost like I look at our season as a series of tests and we took a lot of tests and we got a lot of As,” said the Lakers general manager and vice president of basketball operations. “We got some A-pluses and A-minuses. We haven’t had a chance to take a final exam yet. … Those are things that I’m very grateful for, that people did a lot of work to put into that. We do hope we get a chance to finish what we started.”

Pelinnka is following the party line from the league set by Adam Silver, which suggests that they will not make any announcements until they know what they need to know, but there is no rush to re-open the league while the nation still fights the pandemic. Also, several public health experts are doubting the NBA’s ability to re-open, even in a controlled environment like Las Vegas.