This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Robert Zeglinski.
I’m going to do something I might regret in a few weeks. Something no one in their right mind has done in the NBA for the better part of almost two decades.
I’m going to count out LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
That’s right. After the Lakers barely scraped by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the play-in game, after an inconsistent season marked by little to write home about until March, after a year where the Lakers played like their age — it would be foolish to trust this team against anyone, let alone the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies. I would advise L.A. to start taking them more seriously.
At a certain point, even if James is one of the two or three best players of all time, you have to stop missing the forest for the purple and gold trees.
Some folks might profess that Tuesday night was just a one-game sample size. That the Lakers have better, more consistent performances within them, and, as an experienced squad, they’re saving their energy for when the games truly matter.
Ah, right, the good ol’ fashioned playoff “switch.” I’ve seen this movie before.
And to that I say: Really? These Lakers have earned the benefit of the doubt? Why should I trust them over a team with younger legs like the Grizzlies? Aside from “LeBron James: Superhero,” give me one legitimate reason, as if that’s meant anything since a bubble NBA title in 2020.
Even after reshuffling their deck for the umpteenth time, the Lakers largely resemble the same team that’s straddled around .500 since capturing the organization’s 17th championship. At their best, they’re an unstoppable force led by a dominant James and Anthony Davis pick-and-roll. At their worst, they’re a movable object, they’re slow and they’re all about committing awful brain farts at the worst possible times.
The one thing — and I must stress this, the one thing — the Lakers genuinely have going for them is that the rest of the California-laden Western Conference playoff field isn’t anything to get excited about. If there were ever a year for a mediocre team that can barely survive play-in games to make a deep playoff run, it’d be this season.
But I don’t think the Lakers will be that mediocre team. Someone else, almost anyone else in the West, is in a stronger position to rise to the top of the rubble. At the very least, I wouldn’t start trusting a squad led by a 38-year-old James.
The Lakers have lost that faith. If they ever deserved it in the first place.
Quick Hits: New NFL mock draft … Charles Barkley’s ill-advised bet … and more
- Christian D’Andrea’s latest mock draft is here and he sees Alabama stars dominating the top five.
- Charles Barkley made a billion-dollar bet with Shaq about the Miami Heat’s play-in game. This was regrettable.
- The Penguins and Blackhawks couldn’t stop sabotaging themselves.
