Snoop Dogg, aka Tha Doggfather, aka Snoop Doggy Dogg is one of the greatest MCs and one of the coolest dudes to ever walk the earth.
And I was willing to put up with an endless string of mediocre albums and shameless product endorsement. I even watched Doggy Fizzle Televizzle.
But this I cannot abide. (Warning: language NSFW).
I understand that this has been an enraging season for Lakers fans. But Snoop I’m afraid has fallen too deep into LeBron stanhood to see that the main thing that has gone wrong with the Lakers this year is LeBron James.
For one thing, LeBron got injured. That’s not his fault, but it does often happen to players when they reach their “re-appearing hairline” years. He has missed 18 games this year, and the effect has been devastating. As it always is with LeBron’s teams, the Lakers identity orbits entirely around James. Without him, the premise of the team collapses.
So that has been a major blow. But it’s the kind of thing you pretty much know is going to happen with a 34-year-old athlete.
This problem is compounded by the fact that LeBron is playing terribly. Every night there’s a new video of him standing in the middle of nowhere while his man shoots an open 3, inbounding the ball off his own backboard, having literally to be shoved by a teammate just to close out on a shooter.
Yeah, LeBron is still good enough to put up numbers. You’re always going to be able to look at Lakers stats and conclude LeBron is carrying the team. But he has nuked any sense of team or identity the Lakers ever hoped to have this season. He botched everything about Anthony Davis and the trade deadline, and after all that he’s criticizing teammates for not being 100 percent focused on basketball. Meanwhile he’s got a talk show on HBO, he’s A&R for a 2 Chainz album, multiple documentaries and who knows what else.
It’s true that the Lakers need better players. Snoop is right about that. But he could really help the Lakers by sitting down LeBron and explaining some of these things to him, before guys like Anthony Davis start doing the math and deciding that playing with LeBron isn’t worth it.
