Lakers Free Fall Continues
The Los Angeles Lakers have never really had a bad team, until now. The Los Angeles Clippers were the bad team in Los Angeles for years. Arsenio Hall joked two decades ago about how visiting teams in the airport would give away which team they were in town to play by their demeanor. If the team was upbeat and jovial, they were there to play the Clippers. If they were uptight and had the look of impending doom, it was the Lakers.
The Lakers have not missed the NBA playoffs very often. The last times was in 2005 when they went 34-48 under Rudy Tomjanovich. The last time before that was in 1994 when they were 33-49. Before that you have to go back to 1976. 1975 was the last Lakers team to lose over 50 games in a season. All of these marks will be surpassed this year at the rate the Lakers are going. They are 16-29 with a game against the World Championship contending Indiana Pacers tonight at Staples Center.
Even last season, when things went horribly wrong with Dwight Howard and Steve Nash joining the team, only to finish near the .500 mark and in the seventh spot in the West, the team was at least competitive. This year, they are doing well to stay out of the cellar in the Pacific Division. Eight of the nest eleven games are at home for the Lakers, but they received some bad news. It appears that Kobe Bryant will be out at least another four weeks. It would have been nice to have Bryant back for this stretch as many of the games on it were possible wins. But now it appears the free fall will continue and they will be knocking a lot of home games off the schedule to boot.
The Lakers should now go into rebuilding mode. This year is over. Even if they could get healthy enough to make a playoff push, merely making the playoffs in Laker Nation is nothing to get excited over. So the Purple and Gold clad basketball fans of Los Angeles have a choice, Deal with getting crushed for the foreseeable future, or jump onto the Clippers bandwagon. It would be awfully tempting, even for the die-hard Lakers fan to do just that. After all, the Clippers are 32-15 and appear to be headed for their second straight division title, even though they have rarely been at full strength this season. When they get their star point guard, Chris Paul, back in the starting lineup, they will be really good.
However, if really put to the test, who would you bet on to win the NBA Championship first, the Lakers or the Clippers. Clearly the Clippers are closer today, but if history tells us anything, the Lakers will not be down for long. The Lakers tend to use these down times to draft wisely, make great trades and nice free agent signings. The Clippers still have not proven they can even get to a conference finals yet.
But in the meantime, it is good to be a Clippers fan in Los Angeles and a bad team to be a Lakers fan.
