How about a Laker Elimination Day.

ElUno20

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Credit to russ every game just eating shit in the post game and having to wear it while ad and lebron are ducking in and out of the season.
 

HomeRunBaker

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Credit to russ every game just eating shit in the post game and having to wear it while ad and lebron are ducking in and out of the season.
Russ whooping it up with the reporters in the presser. When you’ve got his money and $40m+ coming next year I suppose it’s easier to take losing basketball games.
 

Euclis20

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Credit to russ every game just eating shit in the post game and having to wear it while ad and lebron are ducking in and out of the season.
I get the sentiment, but he's the 3rd highest paid player in the league this year (and next). He's the only one whose been consistently healthy and playing, but the Lakers still do better when he's on the bench. Eating shit in post game press conferences is the least that he can do.
 

reggiecleveland

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Euclis20

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Incredible to think ESPN had AD ranked as the #2 player in the league like 5 seconds ago. He looks like a dime store late-career LaMarcus Aldridge right now.
No kidding. Most outlets still seem him as borderline top 10, but even in games that he played this year (most of them with Lebron), the Lakers were just 17-23. It's a ridiculous joke that he made the NBA 75th anniversary team.

As recently a couple weeks ago, if you had told me the Spurs and Pels would bounce the Lakers from the *play in* with three games left in the season, I would have said, no effin way. This has really been an epic collapse (assuming the Suns close this out...)
The Lakers have the second worst record in the league since the ASB, only ahead of Portland. It's incredible.
 

nighthob

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Teams with bad losing records who don't deserve a spot that's why. It's getting like the NHL or how at times Hockey used to have bad teams make the playoffs and upset the No.1 seed. Makes the regular season mean little.
The top ten in the east all have winning records.
 

lovegtm

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Regardless of whether the mickey mouse title was legitimate, I fully support all efforts to de-legitimatize it.
 

Kliq

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The thing about the bubble was that a few of the better teams (most notably the Clippers) basically didn't want to be there and gave up during the playoffs. The Lakers did win a title under difficult circumstances in a lot of ways, but at the same time it was also undoubtedly easier in a lot of ways. They won a title after they had a couple of months to get healthy and did it entirely on neutral courts. The fact that it was the only season with LeBron that they were ever any good makes it stand out even more.
 

PedroKsBambino

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I think that is a legit title, but also one can ask (in assessing the Lebron era) whether it was fluky given schedule.

Many people raised the question of Laker depth and health as the biggest risk of a Lebron-AD combo given Lebron's age and AD's fragility. The only time the Lakers managed through that was the unique, unforeseeable bubble dynamics where guys got a long time off to rest/heal, then played a relatively short mini-season in the bubble for the title. It counts---all teams had the same benefits from that---but the Laker team profile, including as well Rondo, uniquely benefitted from the structure. That wasn't part of the roster construction theory, it was just blind 'luck' from a Laker season perspective.

Forced to play anything close to a full season, the laker health/depth problems have been precisely what many predicted they would be at the start.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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Let's say you take thirty runners and have them run a half marathon, then let them rest and recover for a week, then have them run another half marathon. The same runner wins both half marathons. Does that mean the winning runner would have won a full marathon? Of course not. It's a similar but different competition that tests different skillsets, including the ability to avoid injury and mitigate fatigue over a more extended period of activity. Can you fault the winning runner if that was the only competition they could compete in? Of course not. They're the winner, full stop. But to consider it the same as winning a full marathon is also wrong.

Would I be making that argument if the Celtics had won in the bubble? I guess we'll never know.
 

lovegtm

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Regardless of whether the mickey mouse title was legitimate, I fully support all efforts to de-legitimatize it.
 

ElUno20

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I get the sentiment, but he's the 3rd highest paid player in the league this year (and next). He's the only one whose been consistently healthy and playing, but the Lakers still do better when he's on the bench. Eating shit in post game press conferences is the least that he can do.
This is lebron's team. It's not on him to eat every night while lebron's wore the whole "he's old and still putting up amazing numbers every night" train for like 6 months.


On the bubble title, i understand logically all the points why it's valid and a real title (and probably agree with them). It just feels different because there was a 3 month break. It's a title to me but of a month + one off tournament not the 2020 season.

Whatever the case i hope it warms lakers fans as their off-season starts while games are still being played.
 

Fishy1

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The Lakers broadcast is talking about all of the injuries, but old players and always injured players get injured. The roster construction was crap and the pieces were never going to fit.
Really reminiscent of the Nash-Kobe-Howard Lakers, even if fundamentally it's a different group of players with a different group of talents. At the end of the day, you put too many injured guys and guys on the downside of their career together and you're just not going to be able to be competitive, no matter how impressive their pedigrees are.
 

Kliq

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I don't need to see the Warriors in the finals again anytime soon, but one thing I did like was how they'd gift everyone with a double-whammy of Carlos Santana and Metallica for their National Anthems.
 

joe dokes

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The thing about the bubble was that a few of the better teams (most notably the Clippers) basically didn't want to be there and gave up during the playoffs. The Lakers did win a title under difficult circumstances in a lot of ways, but at the same time it was also undoubtedly easier in a lot of ways. They won a title after they had a couple of months to get healthy and did it entirely on neutral courts. The fact that it was the only season with LeBron that they were ever any good makes it stand out even more.
Everyone will remember. It's like the St. Louis Browns' pennant during The War Years.
 

snowmanny

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Dec 8, 2005
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I did enjoy some Laker fan calling a radio show today to say this proves that Kobe was better than LeBron.

I mean, Kobe obviously wasn’t better than LeBron, but I sort of enjoy the fact that LeBron has chosen and decided to live in the one city on the planet where lots of fans don’t think he’s a top three player of all-time; a lot of them would probably put him about eighth.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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I did enjoy some Laker fan calling a radio show today to say this proves that Kobe was better than LeBron.

I mean, Kobe obviously wasn’t better than LeBron, but I sort of enjoy the fact that LeBron has chosen and decided to live in the one city on the planet where lots of fans don’t think he’s a top three player of all-time; a lot of them would probably put him about eighth.
It’s like they’ve erased the 2004-05 season from their memories.
These bastards are winning the lottery arent they
These bastards don’t have their pick this year no matter where it falls, so that would be great for the Pelicans.
 

Euclis20

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It’s like they’ve erased the 2004-05 season from their memories.

These bastards don’t have their pick this year no matter where it falls, so that would be great for the Pelicans.
NO is 12-8 since the ASB, and theoretically Zion is coming back next year. Zion/Ingram/McCollum isn't a top 3 I'd want (theoretically you want at least one of your top guys to be an average defender), but all that and adding a top lottery pick is mildly interesting, and their expectations should be the highest they've been since at least 2018 when they had Boogie and AD, and actually won a playoff series.
 

Was (Not Wasdin)

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I think that is a legit title, but also one can ask (in assessing the Lebron era) whether it was fluky given schedule.

Many people raised the question of Laker depth and health as the biggest risk of a Lebron-AD combo given Lebron's age and AD's fragility. The only time the Lakers managed through that was the unique, unforeseeable bubble dynamics where guys got a long time off to rest/heal, then played a relatively short mini-season in the bubble for the title. It counts---all teams had the same benefits from that---but the Laker team profile, including as well Rondo, uniquely benefitted from the structure. That wasn't part of the roster construction theory, it was just blind 'luck' from a Laker season perspective.

Forced to play anything close to a full season, the laker health/depth problems have been precisely what many predicted they would be at the start.
I think this is exactly right. Lebron the GM has put the team in a terrible hole as far as age, injuries and lack of depth, and Lebron the player cannot overcome it. Have to question whether or not he (and more likely AD) can ever win another title without some long breaks during the season (certainly didnt work this year).

Hard to believe Lebron's been in LA four years, they've gone DNQ, Title, First Round loss, DNQ. That's like the Red Sox 2012-2016 (Last, WS Title, Last, Last).
 

E5 Yaz

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If we're modeling this after YED, then I wonder which Laker will take an ill-fated helicopter ride this off-season
 

scottyno

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Dec 7, 2008
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The Russ trade absolutely killed them. The bubble team roster was really really good and really well assembled. If they'd gone with Derozan Hield+ instead of RWB last summer they'd be a top 3 seed in the west right now and possibly the favorite to win the title. Hield would be absolutely deadly with Lebron and Davis.

Now they're basically screwed for next year too unless they want to kick the draft pick can further down the road to solve the Russ problem a year early.
 

pantsparty

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Not only do they not own their draft pick for this coming draft, the Pelicans also own the Lakers' first round pick unprotected in 2024, as well as unprotected pick swaps in 2023 and 2025. They aren't drafting in the lottery any time soon unless the Pelicans also suck in one of the swap years.
 

jmcc5400

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Not only do they not own their draft pick for this coming draft, the Pelicans also own the Lakers' first round pick unprotected in 2024, as well as unprotected pick swaps in 2023 and 2025. They aren't drafting in the lottery any time soon unless the Pelicans also suck in one of the swap years.
Not quite. It's a pick swap in 2023 and an unprotected first in 2024 that the Pelicans can roll over to 2025 if they want to.
 

doc

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Jul 14, 2005
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If we're modeling this after YED, then I wonder which Laker will take an ill-fated helicopter ride this off-season
Can we get an MS Paint of Big Baby throwing an errant pass bringing down Kobe’s copter?
 

pantsparty

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Not quite. It's a pick swap in 2023 and an unprotected first in 2024 that the Pelicans can roll over to 2025 if they want to.
Ah, thanks. I was looking at an older article that had wrong info. I found a newer article that backs up what you said.