It’s probably the only way this regular season could’ve ended, the A team Lakers against some C team opponent, the result almost immaterial to what’s coming next. Because why should a regular season full of twists end without at least some uncertainty?
The Lakers never had control of their season, not with the short turnaround after their bubble championship, not with their two superstars missing massive time and not with so many questions as they head into the postseason.
It didn’t matter that the Lakers were complete Sunday night in New Orleans or that they mostly cruised to a 110-98 win. Their fate was decided in Portland, where a blowout win against Denver sealed their play-in fate.
So why was LeBron James in the game?
Full strength was all the Lakers had left. And then with another faulty step, even that was in doubt. The plan was to get James out of the game right around the time he appeared to roll his right ankle.
Just another time fate intervened in what the Lakers had planned for.
“You can’t worry about what hasn’t happened yet,” coach Frank Vogel said afterward. “Guys have to get in rhythm and have the ability to play well. …It’s always a balance.”
Vogel said James told him that he was OK, that the ankle wouldn’t be a problem. And that’s good. Because a problem could be coming for the Lakers in the NBA’s first iteration of a four-team play-in tournament.
Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors are one of the scariest teams anyone could play in a one-game series. The Lakers will try to extinguish Curry, the NBA’s scoring champion, Wednesday at Staples Center. A loss means the Lakers will have one final chance to extend their season, either facing Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies or Gregg Popovich‘s San Antonio Spurs.
It’s a long way from the presumed Lakers-Brooklyn Nets NBA Finals that seemed so inevitable before Anthony Davis grabbed at his Achilles tendon on Feb. 24.
Since then, it’s been a fight for some stability — a battle they’ve not been able to win. And even when it seemed like they had it, a wrong step or a bad test, and it would disappear.
The Lakers never had control of this season, not after the NBA and the NBPA sprung it on them that the season would start before Christmas. The offseason was about recovery instead of preparation, scouts and executives around the league murmuring while Davis tried to play himself into shape.
His injury was bad; James’ injury — the result of some reckless hustle — made things almost impossible. A late-season trip to the NBA’s COVID protocols for Dennis Schroder meant the Lakers had to play a stretch of games without a true point guard.
Maybe it was the compressed schedule used by the NBA to play as many games in as short a time as possible.
And, certainly, it could’ve been the cumulative nature of the last two seasons blending into one.
