Lakers Trapped in the Twilight Zone
Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
In the city of movie stars and the silver screen, I sometimes wonder if this Lakers’ season is the work of a Hollywood screen writer’s concoction of drama and sheer horror.
This whole season literally reminds me of a zany episode from the Twilight Zone entitled, “A World of His Own”. In the episode, one of the main characters is a play write who has a fantastical dictation machine that brings his characters alive, but also destroys them once he tosses the recordings into the fire.
It seems like whoever the screen writer for the Lakers’ season has tossed them into the fire. With erupting frustrations, a losing season and turmoiling injuries of Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and many others, it’s safe to say the Lakers’ season has been scrapped to the ground of the writer’s room.
It seems like every Lakers and NBA blog is talking about the Lakers’ future regarding free agency, uncertainty for the future, being in the lottery and just losing in general. These are all topics that make everything so bizarre because these things haven’t been associated with the Lakers in a very, very long time. We’ve become so accustomed to parades in June that losing feels like a piece of science fiction that is just not feasibly possible to our imaginations.
The Lakers haven’t gotten this close to the uncharted territory of being below mediocre since Magic Johnson’s final retirement in the early 90s. And there’s no telling how bad the Lakers’ record will be once the season ends, which is a pretty scary thing to think about because this might be the franchise’s worst season since moving to LA.
There will be no playoffs and, what’s even more shockingly, is the Lakers will not have a representative in the All-Star game. Kobe is more than likely to sit out this year’s game, which ends his streak of appearing in 15 straight during his career. Pau Gasol and Nick Young will probably not be selected as reserves so no one from the purple and gold will be suiting up in those awful t-shirt jerseys. The last time the Lakers didn’t have a representative in the All-Star game, Bill Clinton was still jamming out with his sax and doing other “activities” in the White House.
So sing it with me, LA–do-do-do-do-do-do …we’ve traveled to another dimension …whose boundaries of imagination have left us in the basketball twilight zone where playoff births, All-Star appearances and championship parades don’t exist.