Beloved, loathed, and prestigious; what do all these three words have in common? They all describe one of the most highly- marketed and globalized franchises in sports history, the Los Angeles Lakers. The glamorous team with sixteen championships to its name has had its head flushed down the toilet for the majority of this decade; ironically enough, this team was the one that looked most promising at the decade’s start, as those Lakers were coming off back to back titles.
These Lakers have one sole player remaining from that last championship roster and he is riding the deepest depths of the ench, a la Juwan Howard’s role for the Big 3 era Miami Heat. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Metta World Peace as much as the next guy, but it’s been safe to say for the last couple seasons that both he and the team’s best years are behind them. It is finally time to switch that around. Often referred to by analysts and beat writers as the ‘Baby Lakers’, these young guys have exposed spurts of brilliance be it by clutch jumpers or triple doubles.
Running 2K Simulations: In my first season, I kept the team stable. Lou Will’s beloved Drake-cosign status and ridiculous range make him a fan avorite coming off the Lakers’ bench and the young core continued to show flashes. Lowlights of the 2016-17 simulation include a 61-point loss in the Boston Garden to the rivaled Celtics and maintaining the worst record in the Western Conference for the second straight year. This first season was a goddamn atrocity to say the least. I ended up drafting Josh Jackson out of Kansas with the first pick.
I plan on interchanging him and Ingram at the 2 and the 3, which would make for a ridiculous perimeter defense because clearly the Lakers can’t stop the ball if their lives depended on it. In the first week of my second season after a busy summer, that of which included the trading of Lou Will and Mozgov’s horrendous contract which opened a window to sign Nerlens Noel! Despite an injury to Brandon Ingram which kept him out since mid-March, the Lakers managed to knock off the 4th seed Jazz in a 5-game series.
On to Oakland, where the Lakers won the second game of the semifinals due to another 40-point outburst from Russell, though had eventually been eliminated by 2018 MVP Kevin Durant and the Warriors. Russell exited the playoffs with averages of 27. 1 PPG, 4. 1 RPG, and 7. 7 APG, talk bout a way to put your name out to the world. It’s already the dawn of the new decade and my young Lakers team is yet to scratch the virtual surface of being true championship contenders due to what remain horrid defensive numbers.
Coming into the 2019-20 season off a disappointing 2018-19, which was full of injuries and a fast- approaching offseason, Los Angeles returned to the playoffs as they partook in the Battle for L. A in the first round. Down 12 points with a few ticks under seven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, hope for the Lakers was as frail as it’s been since the millisecond this happened. A game seven doesn’t win itself, nor does a team win 16 championships by feeling sorry for itself.
Russell, Ingram and Noel (a future unsung Laker hero by the likes of how he saved the team’s ass in the fourth thanks to numerous offensive boards) led the Lakers on a 24-11 run to close the quarter and the series. Capped off by a game winning three from Ingram, the Lakers have officially overthrown the Clippers, who temporarily held the top spot in Hollywood all thanks to David Stern. After losing a tight-knit seven game series against Karl-Anthony Towns and the Timberwolves, I decided to give it a rest. What predictions can a video game make that are going to be any better than mine?
Hell, I’m sitting on my couch five years deep into the future just trying to figure out why I haven’t replaced Jim Buss yet. What do I think will happen? I don’t know, man. I’ve always made lists of predictions since I started keeping up with the league, but something about Lakers basketball this year has just been so erratic and unpredictable. The idea of growing up in LA, the city kept safe by the watchful eyes of Kobe Bryant, for all my 18 years to wind up watching a young and budding team with reams of making their own names a household name is an idea that I’m slowly growing accustomed to.
What it seems that most people fail to understand, including me, at first is the idea of providing these young players with the benefit of the doubt. Julius Randle is three years older than me, averaged a double double in his ‘sophomore’ season coming off a broken foot , and I’m sitting on my couch complaining about the fact his handle on the ball is a little too reckless. D’angelo Russell is fucking two years older than me, starting for one of the most ubiquitous teams in all of sports, and I’m on my couch hining about the fact that this kid missed a couple of open threes.
Brandon Ingram is one year older than I am, coming off the deepest bench in the league, and I’m bitching about the fact that he’s not getting 10-points a night. You don’t automatically come into the league a superstar and although the Towns’ and Embiids’ of the latest talent crops came in to their situations with a nightly green light doesn’t mean Russell or Ingram will receive that same treatment. Stephen Curry didn’t enter the NBA as back-to-back MVP but goddamn it, he pulled it off without a soul seeing it coming.
Kevin Durant as never projected to lead the league in scoring on a yearly basis but in the last seven years he’s snatched four scoring titles. Russell Westbrook wasn’t taken with the Thunder’s fourth pick under the impression that this dude’s going to average a triple double. This young kids have potential to grow into something special, just like the aforementioned game-changers have shown us. I’m addressing this because I’m sick and tired of talking to people about the Lakers’ future in logical and rational fashion just to hear them say something along the likes of “They suck! or “It’ll take five years until you guys even dream of being ood again. ”
Five years? That’s a bit brash, don’t you think? Considering the fact Kevin Durant led his young Thunder team, accompanied by a sophomore Westbrook, a rookie James Harden and a budding Jeff Green to a 50-win 8th seed the season after they won only 23 games the year prior to that gives me a glimmer of hope. I’m getting off topic because, no, this is not a comparison. I’m not throwing out these stats to say that these guys might as well stop planning their vacations next February because each of them is an automatic All-Star lock, because that’s far from the case.
The case is the fact that these guys are slowly but surely maturing, barring showings of immaturity and inconsistency . They won’t be losing to mediocre home teams at Staples Center next year nor will they be losing to the Mavericks by a pitiful 43 points the year after. Being the Laker die hard that I am, this process has taken a while to grow accustomed to; though, I’ve come to realize that I’ve seen numbers of athletes grow to become superstars under immense pressure and become champions under flame and scrutiny. Now with that being said, feel free to take the Baby Lakers lightly, but not for long.