LeBron's First Year with the Lakers was a Disaster

From day one, everyone in the media asserted that making the playoffs was already a given for the Lakers, just because of the mere fact that LeBron is now in the team.  And for two months or so, it was looking that way.  But then, their playoff positioning steadily slipped away, and the season eventually devolved into a dumpster fire.  As a Lakers fan for almost all of my life, I’m of course frustrated that my team isn’t in the playoffs for the sixth year in a row (and haven’t won a championship in nearly a decade).

The following are the sources of my exasperation, dismay, and displeasure regarding the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2018-19 season:

The Young Lakers Didn’t Improve Much

Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, and Josh Hart are the Lakers’ future.  And they had performances which gave every Laker fan cause for optimism.  Kuz had a game where he scored a career-high 41 points in just three quarters.  BI was seemingly having a breakthrough after the All-Star break.  Zo was playing like he wanted a spot in the All-Defensive Team.  And Hart had, well, heart.

Unfortunately, nobody developed to an extent where you would think he’s going to be an All-Star soon.  If you compare their stats this past season to the season prior, you would see that they’ve barely improved, if at all, or have even regressed.

Injuries

The Lakers’ streak of injury-plagued seasons has extended to the most recent one.  Several players missed a considerable amount of games.  For perspective, the core of LeBron, Ingram, Kuzma, and Lonzo only played 23 games together!  Seriously, either someone hexed this franchise or their training and conditioning staff just sucked year in, year out.

LeBron James

Even though the Lakers finished the 2017-18 season with another losing record, I generally felt good about the direction they were heading.  Coach Luke wasn’t perfect, but I was generally sold on his vision for the team.  The young guys weren’t instant superstars, but they showed exciting promise.  The Lakers were fun again.

Then, LeBron was signed to a 4-year deal in the off-season.  And I wasn’t thrilled of the move.  First of all, he’s 34 years old.  He’s at the tail end of his career.  He’s a freak of nature, yes, but the likelihood of him losing to father time at this stage is high.  Second, the addition of a LeBron James would likely disrupt the existing team culture.  He’s a player that generates drama, and he would directly or indirectly make everything revolve around him.  It felt like, instead of the Lakers just moving forward to success as a unit, the Lakers would have to make LeBron happy first so that he could lead them to success.  I feared that he wouldn’t be won over by Luke Walton.  I feared that he was going to stunt the young guys’ development.

Nonetheless, I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the start of the season.

Unfortunately, all my fears were warranted.  At the end of the season, Walton was sacked (and the Kings were quick to offer him a job – good for them), and the young guys hardly grew (to be fair, it’s also likely that this is on them).  We don’t really know the whole story, but as fans looking in, it seemed like LeBron was a major cause of the dysfunction happening with the Lakers.  Besides, whether it’s fair or not to blame him for the Lakers’ downfall, he’s the leader, and by principle, everything is his fault.

At season 16, LeBron definitely regressed.  After years of being impressively durable, he got his first ever major injury, which resulted to him playing just 55 games – the least of his career.  His stats were still around his usual, but his defense was at the worst it had ever been.  His incapability or unwillingness to play defense was well-documented this past season, but it was most summed up by this moment…

LeBron also shot a career-worst 67% from the free-throw line.  This made him unreliable during clutch situations, as not only he couldn’t make free-throws, but his most unstoppable scoring move – bulldozing towards the basket – was also neutralized since the defense would just foul him on the way and send him to the line.

His lack of games played, defense, and free-throw shooting was enough to stifle the team’s success, with him being the leader and all that.  But what’s worse was his petty, passive-aggressive body language on the court…

The display of this toxic behavior, mixed with his lackluster efforts, was severely damaging to team and fan morale.

More frustrating is the fact that after arrogantly declaring he was going on “playoff mode”, the Lakers only kept losing themselves out of a playoff spot.  And it was as if LeBron only became more apathetic afterward.

Look.  I understand that LeBron has never been the type of player who has a stubborn “never say die” attitude.  His MO has always been dominating opponents with pure natural talent.  And since it often works, he really has no reason why he has to overexert himself or play with grit and heart.  That’s why he rarely does so, and it’s in those moments that he does choose to do so where I get to like him the most (e.g. the entire 2015 NBA Finals, the first four quarters of Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals).  But, again, you can’t blame LeBron for the kind of player that he is.  He may not have the doggedness of a Michael Jordan or a Kobe Bryant, but he does win without it.

Still, when you declare that you were going “playoff mode”, I would expect that you would be playing differently – that you would go “all out” in every game from then on.  It was extremely disappointing, because in a similar situation, Kobe literally sacrificed his body and career just to drag the Lakers to the playoffs.  I’m not necessarily holding this against LeBron.  If I’m LeBron, I wouldn’t trade my future years for the present especially when I’m gunning for the GOAT title, which can be solidified by earning a couple more personal achievements, like surpassing Kareem as the all-time points leader.  Nevertheless, this just made it harder for him to be respected by die-hard Laker fans like me, for it seemed like he cared more for his personal achievements.  During the season, he was often self-congratulating himself in social media and even self-dubbed himself as the GOAT on TV.  It also didn’t help that, as usual, he and his media allies were so quick to make excuses for him and shift the blame on others for the team’s struggles.

In the end, I want to be positive about LeBron being with the Lakers (for now).  He’s here already.  We can’t really do anything else but wish for the best.  It’s just his first year, and I’ll reserve my final judgment after his tenure.  But as far as that first year is concerned, he was a letdown.

Hopefully, the extra rest he gets from not being in the playoffs this year would result to him being much better next season.

Maginka

For me, most of the fault for the Lakers’ dysfunction lies on Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka’s front office.  Their moves and statements during this season proved to be detrimental to the team.

D’Angelo Russell became an All-Star with the Nets past season, but I wouldn’t really consider Maginka trading him two years ago a fail when that deal got them the pick to draft Kuzma on top of getting rid of Mozgov’s insane contract.  Plus, no way would D’Angelo have become an All-Star in the West.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, despite LeBron’s terrible first season in purple and gold, the jury is still out about his signing.

The first real problem I had with Maginka was their other decisions that off season.  It was reported that Walton begged them to keep Julius Randle and Brook Lopez – two great contributors of the prior season – but they let them walk.  If the reports were true, they didn’t even extend an offer to them.  Instead, they gave one-year deals to Rajon Rondo, JaVale McGee, Lance Stephenson, and Michael Beasley.  Now, Rondo and McGee ended up being net positives for the team for many games, and “Make ‘Em Dance” Lance was actually entertaining.  But still, all four had reputations for being bananas.  Add them to an environment that had talented, overeager, immature youngsters and a drama-magnet LeBron James, and you have yourself one heluva recipe for implosion.  And that was exactly how it turned out.  Midway through the season, these vets began gripping about their roles and minutes as they needed to put up numbers in order to make themselves appealing for their next contracts.

But Maginka’s worst screwup was the handling of the business with Anthony Davis leading toward the trade deadline.  It was a catastrophe.  The Pelicans front office pulled off a cruel power play on Maginka, which made them looked pathetic because they were unable to respond accordingly.  Trade rumors of the Lakers front office offering everyone in the roster not named LeBron James for Anthony Davis were regularly leaked to the media, while the Pelicans front office didn’t show any indication that they want to work out a deal.  At that point, Maginka should have realized already that the Pelicans front office was screwing with them, and should have had the guts to say, “You don’t want to be reasonable?  Fine!  We’re no longer interested of making any deals with you,” slam the phone on them, and make it known to the world that they were no longer interested of trading for Davis (it doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not; let the Pelicans office make the next move).  Instead, they allowed the drama to go on longer than it should have had business of going on.  The damaging rumors lingered till the trade deadline, wrecking the team morale to the point of no return.

Then, when they couldn’t trade for AD, they instead traded one of their young talents, Ivica Zubac – who, by the way, was playing well for the Lakers at that point – and Michael Beasley to the Clippers for Mike Muscala.  It was a terrible trade.  It was basically just a trade for the sake of making a trade – like Maginka panicked and they just wanted something to show for during the trade deadline.  It was supposedly done to add shooting to the team, but if so, it made the move more annoying.  Why?  Because they should have gone for shooters right off the bat during the free agency instead of signing players like Michael Beasley!

Lastly, in a shocking, cowardly move, Magic Johnson decided to step down as president of basketball operations at the end of the season.  Instead of manning up and help clean up the mess he had a part making, he decided to take the easy way out.  Worse, the way he did it was spinelessly unbecoming, failing to inform his boss Jeanie Buss first before announcing it through the media.

All of these resulted to a highly exasperating season and a suddenly uncertain Lakers future.  Of course, I’m hoping for the Lakers to pick itself up quickly.  But we’ll probably have to wait until July before we can start having a better idea on how things will shape up moving forward.