Los Angeles Lakers: The good, the bad, and the ugly from 2018-19

The 2018-19 season did not go as planned for the Los Angeles Lakers. We take a look back at the good, the bad and the ugly from the season.

Alright, everyone, we made it through the Los Angeles Lakers season. There are four games left of this calamitous season we all had to witness. The best title for this piece would be The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (with emphasis on the ugly) because I feel this describes our season perfectly.

There were some good times, although rare. There were definitely some bad times, but for the most part, this season was just ugly. This season was so ugly that if this Lakers season was a human and the future of the world’s population came down to someone having to reproduce with that human, humanity as we know it would come to a swift halt.

But the good news is, it’s almost over. We can head into the offseason with aspirations of bringing another superstar in and run this whole thing back again come October. But until then, let’s take a look at some of the top good, bad, and ugly moments of the year so when we raise a banner in the next three years, we can all come back to this time and salute the gruesome things we had to endure in the 2018-19 season to get us back to where we belong, at the top of the NBA.

The Good

My first job out of college was at a small marketing company in San Diego. My boss at that company used to do this thing every day he would come in where he would walk around the office and say one good thing to every person he saw before he could say anything negative or bad for the day.

That’s how I am going to start this off. Not because the bad and ugly dramatically outweigh the good, but because I do believe that starting off with the good helps raise morale.

Now, even though the majority of the good are highlights and moments from the season, there are a few things I want to discuss as well. First off, this tweet from Trevor Lane. Take a look:

Now people have this idea about Lakers fans that no matter what happens, we always have an excuse as to why things didn’t go our way. This season, in particular, I have seen a plethora of excuses being thrown around. In my opinion, this stat is the only thing should be saying.

Injuries aren’t an excuse to why things didn’t go as planned. Injuries are erratic events that can change franchise histories and human lives. The Lakers dealt with an abundance of these all year long. To think that when they had the four most important players on the team all playing together they had a 15-8 record is something to be relatively proud of.

It hurts to think about what they could have done with 50 or even 60 games together. It hurts, even more, to think we may never know how that team would be after this offseason.

Due to the unforeseeable future of our roster, it’s important to note this stat and know that this team, when healthy, could compete and win. It won’t show up in any history books, this team will never be an NBA 2K All-Time team, and no one will ever watch highlights on the 2018-19 Lakers, but this team could have made some noise if they had the opportunity.

There were some other good things that I could go into to make people feel somewhat satisfied, such as like Brandon Ingram‘s after the All-Star break play or LeBron James passing Michael Jordan on the All-Time Scoring List.

The fact that Los Angeles still has an abundance of cap room for this summer, Lonzo’s incredible defensive abilities, and of course wins against the Celtics in Boston on a Rajon Rondo buzzer beater and against the Warriors on Christmas Day are also positive takeaways, but I’d rather just show you some of the top plays just so we can all be happy for a moment.

These are in no particular order but here are some good moments from this Lakers season.

Get Well Soon BI!

It’s obviously very difficult to choose the best LeBron dunk from the season but this three dunk sequence from LeBron and Kyle Kuzma was by far one of my favorite moments of the year.

https://www.facebook.com/ESPN/videos/2226683317392256/

Now I know Lance Stephenson steps on Jeff Green‘s shoe but I don’t care for a second because this might be the best bench reaction of the entire NBA this season (yeah Brooklyn Nets, I said it).

I just think one is hilarious. The dude actually brought his own wine to the game. Staples Center, this is LeBron’s way of saying go find a Sommelier so he can just taste test all different kinds of wine while on the bench.

The Bad

Where do I begin? I could go into the absolutely horrendous excuse for the defense played when Lonzo got hurt. We could dive into the Ivica Zubac trade. We could talk about Kentavious Caldwell-Pope‘s shot against the Houston Rockets in January that a friend of mine said kept him awake all that night thinking about how bad it was. I could even get into the post-trade deadline drama and how that ultimately changed the direction of the season.

But why bother?

All that does it make me angry as I type and you angry as you read. So instead, I will provide a video that recently went viral on Twitter that pretty much sums up the bad for this season. If you haven’t seen it yet, it highlights some of the worst moments of this season into a “One Shining Moment” video.

More from Lake Show Life

• Darvin Ham adds to Max Christie hype train after Lakers preseason opener
• Is LeBron James playing tonight? Latest Lakers vs Warriors update
• Can Darvin Ham put all of the Lakers puzzle pieces together?
• Lakers news: Darvin Ham knows his fifth starter, LeBron James and Rui Hachimura, Jalen Hood-Schifino praise
• Michael Malone’s painfully ironic comment has Lakers fans heated

The Ugly

The ugly parts of this season do not need any expert analysis. You don’t need KenPom ratings or advanced analytics. All you need to do to see the ugliness of this season is two eyes and a basic understanding of good vs bad. That’s it.

I am going to highlight the ugliest losses of the year. Now a warning, if you are reading this in the evening and plan to go to bed soon, just stop reading now.

Going to bed angry is a terrible idea. I mean terrible! Almost as terrible as taking the best player in the world and surrounding him with a bunch of young guys who can’t shoot and a bunch of old vets who also can’t shoot. If you aren’t reading this before you bed, well, misery loves company so let’s get miserable.

1. 2/5/19 Lakers: 94 – Pacers 136. The Lakers lost to a team who just lost their only All-Star a little over a week prior by over 40 points. The largest loss in LeBron’s career. Way to go guys. Los Angeles dropped to .500 after this loss. Never got higher than one game above .500 the rest of the season.
2. 1/4/19 Knicks 119 – Lakers 112. Los Angeles lost, at home, to a tanking team, who hadn’t won more than 10 games so far this season. Even without LeBron, the Lakers should have won by 20. THE KNICKS AREN’T EVEN TRYING TO WIN GAMES!
3. 1/19/19 Lakers 134 – Rockets 138. I mentioned this game briefly earlier but this, in my opinion, was the end of the season. The Lakers were barely surviving without LeBron and we’re barely floating above .500, gripping on to a playoff spot. Los Angeles was obliterating the Rockets in the first half, going into halftime up 18. All they had to do was keep playing hard, get a huge road win, and LeBron is about to come back. Instead, Lonzo gets hurt (the moment the season took a hard 180-degree turn), and they blow the lead, KCP takes one of the worst shots I have ever seen, and Los Angeles loses in OT. They go on to lose seven of the next 10 and never look back.

So there you have it. The 2018-19 season was anything but what we expected. Once again, it will be April and the Lakers will not be in the postseason. Once again, the draft lottery will occur and all we can hope for as fans is a ping pong ball bouncing our way.

So enjoy the offseason everyone, I know the Lakers will, and let’s hope this summer is one that we talk about for the next 30 years. If not, the 2019-20 Lakers season article might have a worse title than The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.