“Do you ever amaze – or surprise – yourself?” LeBron James was asked following the Lakers’ thrilling Game 4 overtime win in Los Angeles on Monday, which gave the team a commanding three-games-to-one lead in their first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies. “Yup,” James replied succinctly. Indeed, recording his first ever 20-point, 20-rebound game on one fully functioning foot, at age 38 (making him the oldest player to ever do so), and in the playoffs no less, was pretty amazing.
But seeing James and the rest of his Lakers cohort topple the odds can hardly continue to be considered a “surprise”. It’s what they’ve been doing all year long: clawing back from an abysmal 2-10 start to an above-.500 finish, and ending a tumultuous regular season – which many believed would have James’ breaking of the scoring record in February as its sole highlight – as the No 7 seed in the Western Conference.
But no man, not even LeBron, is an island, and many factors had to coalesce to bring this Lakers team to where they find themselves after Friday night: when they blew out the second-seeded Grizzlies by 40 points in a series-clinching Game 6, punching their ticket to the last four in the widest-open Western Conference playoffs in a decade.
Taking a moment to travel back in time to mid-November, let’s set the scene. The Lakers have won only two of their first 12 games, the trade to move Russell Westbrook that many had hoped for over the summer didn’t come to fruition, and the only significant acquisition of the off-season (unabashed troll-cum-point guard Patrick Beverly) has been a disappointment. First-time head coach Darvin Ham is struggling to maintain his stubborn optimism in post-game press conferences. Analytics wonks give the team a 0.3% chance to even make the playoffs, and the vibes are, to put it indelicately, in hell. So how did they turn it around?
Yes, the most consequential turning point of the season came at the trade deadline, when Westbrook and Beverly were ultimately moved in exchange for the depth that’s buoying the team now, especially on nights when James and his perennial All-Star running mate Anthony Davis don’t have the juice. But Davis himself was single-handedly responsible for a miraculous stretch in late November and early December, when he was playing at an absolute MVP level, without which the post-deadline recovery might not have been possible. Davis averaged 32/15/3 over an eight-game stretch, recorded double-doubles over a 10-game span, and posted as many as 55 points in a given night. While the hot streak came to an abrupt end when Davis was sidelined with a foot injury later that month, it ignited the turnaround that has come to define the season.
Another key contributor to keeping the Lakers afloat was the improbable ascent of undrafted second-year player Austin Reaves, who made a miraculous jump from rock-solid rookie on a terrible team to stellar role player and, arguably, the third-best player on a sudden championship contender. The 24-year-old Reaves wasn’t a finalist for the Most Improved Player award this year, but there certainly would have been a case for it. A savant at drawing fouls, he was among the league leaders in trips to the free throw line since the All-Star break. A sparkplug that plays hard on both ends, the Arkansas-born Reaves has become so beloved by Lakers fans that he now elicits “MVP” chants every time he goes to the line at Crypto.com Arena.
That aforementioned trade deadline, though, was everything. The first relevant deal was actually a couple of weeks earlier, when the Lakers shipped a floundering Kendrick Nunn and a second-round pick to the Washington Wizards for Japanese-born power forward Rui Hachimura, who showed glimpses of promise once he arrived in Los Angeles but has been a revelation under the bright lights of the postseason. And the real blockbuster moves came on deadline day itself, when Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka traded Westbrook – whose relationship with the Lakers had grown tense beyond repair – along with Beverly to acquire D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and Mo Bamba. Russell has offered a substantive upgrade at the point guard position, while Vanderbilt has provided a necessary defensive boost. Beasley and Bamba have been streakier and given less consistent minutes, but still provide much-needed depth to the rotation.
The new version of the team took shape immediately as they surged to the NBA’s best record after the deadline. Players have spoke of the chemistry being instant. And the energy shift was palpable, both from the team themselves and from the fans in the building. Pelinka has, for all his past blunders, put together something special at the front-office buzzer. And it’s all paid off in the postseason as the Lakers have become the first No 7 seed to spring an opening-round upset since the San Antonio Spurs did so in 2010, and giving LA fans their first full-capacity playoff games in their home arena since 2013.
Asked by the Guardian after Friday’s Game 6 rout what one word would define this iteration of the Lakers, Reaves chose “together”. And they certainly looked it on Friday night as they ended the Grizzlies’ season in dominant fashion. The arena was positively electric for all of the three of the Lakers’ home games in the series, while the fans, overjoyed to have a team worthy of excitement after a season and a half of misery, played a sixth-man role of their own. And Dillon Brooks, who infamously disparaged all-time great James in his postgame availability after Game 2 and asserted that he doesn’t “respect someone until he gives me 40”, got to meet his season’s end in poetic fashion. The final score: Lakers 125, Grizzlies 85.
A moment that felt series- if not season-defining on Friday came late in the third quarter when, with the Lakers ahead by 30, Davis threw his 6ft 10in frame into the courtside seats for a loose ball, lumbered his way back onto the court with a laugh, and, beaming, motioned to the already fiery crowd to get even louder, as if to say: Are you not entertained? The sequence was symbolic of a hard-fought series coming to a victorious head, but moreso, emblematic of the season: LeBron and co endured a roller-coaster, took some punches, and made it through to the other side. They’re stronger for it and, beyond that, they’re joyful. The once-gloomy Lakers have their groove back, which may be this season’s most surprising development of all.
