Los Angeles Lakers: Tank is on, lose again without LeBron James
By Ronald Agers
The Los Angeles Lakers look to have embraced the tank, losing to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night.
The Los Angeles Lakers lost a “meaningless” game against the New York Knicks that had the visiting team’s announcer, Walt Frazier providing enough buzz for talk shows all over the country the next day.
Then the Lakers fell deeper in the abyss of embarrassment by watching LeBron James get his lunch money taken from him at the end of the game by a lottery bust named Mario Hezonja.
The Lakers opponent for the night, being the Milwaukee Bucks, know Hezonja quite well. See he was the guy that dunked on Giannis Antetokunmpo and stepped over him to draw his ire.
The Lakers lost another meaningless game on Tuesday night, but Walt Frazier was not around to shine the spotlight and there was no star power in this game at all with both marquee named superstars, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokunmpo, out. I guess they can both compare Mario Hezonja experiences.
LeBron James sat out because of a reported strained groin and Giannis sat out from a sprained ankle suffered in a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday.
No matter how the injury report plays out, Lakers fans read only one narrative out of this situation; the official Los Angeles Lakers tank announcement is now in effect. Sobering and sad.
The Lakers actually competed and played hard but just did not have enough firepower to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks, losing 115-101.
The Bucks have now swept the Lakers in back to back seasons for the first time since the 1981-82 season. The Lakers now have lost four straight games and to be honest with you Lakers fans, this could easily stretch to 15 games to close out the season.
The story of this game was the inability to stop the Milwaukee Bucks front line. The combination of Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez and Nikola Mirotic basically controlled the game and stretched the Lakers defense out so badly that I found myself yelling, “Come on JaVale!” on numerous occasions.
This game is just another example of bad defense, bad outside shooting (38 percent) and more fuel for angry Lakers fans with how this franchise is run.
Let’s start with the front office.