Los Angeles Lakers fans, media to blame for the 2019 season, players blame injuries

Los Angeles Lakers fans need to look in the mirror, the 2019 season results are also their fault. Magic leaving, giving into talk of blaming the coach and more.

Listening to Stephen A. Smith and others trying to tear apart the Los Angeles Lakers organization through the fans solidifies that he does not want the Lakers to be successful. His main goal is to send the best free agents to his New York Knicks.

Smith was tearing apart Luke Walton prior to Magic Johnson‘s resignation and he didn’t look smart when Magic wouldn’t fire Luke and instead decided to resign.

Fans forget that the media have their own motives, look at Dick Vitale. He cannot utter one bad word about Duke but has systematically torn apart the Arizona Wildcats so his Duke buddy Bobby Hurley and Arizona’s rival ASU could beat them.

And it worked! Vitale spent a year enticing the Arizona Wildcats basketball fans.

Media like Stephen A, and others, enjoyed stirring the pot with fans to get the organization to get rid of coach Luke Walton and blame him for everything that went on this season.

If it wasn’t Luke’s fault, they blamed Magic. If not Magic, if that didn’t stick with fans, they turned to Rob Pelinka. They are now attacking Jeanie Buss, who when she made the decisions to hire the front office personnel, everyone was singing her praise. It’s whatever gets views, clicks, and reaction.

The media loves to hate on the Lakers and mostly the newer Lakers fans give in to it. Older Lakers fans were much more patient, wanting the group to grow over a couple of years and were upset about the trades.

Adrian Wojnarowski, who fans look to as the God of inside factual news, doesn’t always get it right. He put out tweets with statements about Jason Kidd being a coaching candidate for the Lakers which made it look like it was a fact Luke was getting fired.

In reality, he probably gets whispers from agents and other “sources” to persuade fans to think the coaches position was in jeopardy. Fans are so gullible, they feed the fire with literally screams to fire the coach.

Another media personality, Brian Windhorst, that has followed LeBron James‘ every move from Cleveland to Miami, back to Cleveland and now the Lakers, spews out crap to any fan who will listen.

Windhorst lambasted Magic, Jeanie, Luke, and the entire family run organization even taking away the credit for him landing LeBron James.

Clearly, Windhorst is not a Lakers fan, so don’t listen to him. He doesn’t want Magic or the Lakers to be successful. He is upset for James. He blames management for losing the year, the season, but we all know the Lakers were a top 10 team when healthy. He didn’t all out blame Luke Walton, for the record.

It’s not the coaches fault that LeBron James sat out 18 games and Lonzo Ball only played 47 out of 82 games. Along with injuries to almost every starter, including Tyson Chandler (who made a huge difference when healthy), Rajon Rondo, and the list goes on. Even Kobe Bryant agrees that the injuries suffered are mostly to blame, and he feels LeBron knows that.

Maybe Lance Stephenson said it best in his exit interview, “I had fun with the guys, learned a lot from these guys — it was tough on us — we never got our unit together and made it so we could be the team we were supposed to be. I had an amazing time — the coaches — if you think about it, the injuries messed us up, even me — there’s a lot of what-ifs.”

You can point to the trades as one of the issues, though, but pressure from the fans caused the front office to make stupid trades. Rob Pelinka came in and got rid of all CAA/Aaron Mintz’s clients as well as Paul George who decided to not come to Los Angeles.

Trading away Ivica Zubac, Julius Randle and rumors surrounding all the rest of the young core did nothing to help fans feel the front office was going in the right direction. But think about this, if the fans weren’t screaming for trades and big names, maybe the front office wouldn’t have felt the pressure to do something, anything.

Fans with pitchforks screaming for someone to get fired think one player or one coach will make a difference. One lottery pick will not turn the entire team around. It is the entire organization has to be cohesive.

In the exit interviews on Wednesday, players such as Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma both agreed that the team had chemistry and you could see it at the end of the season on the bench as they cheered on the team. They both feel the team is a “Tight-knit group” and that they are family.

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Kyle has established himself as a Laker that needs to stay on the roster and has received probably the least amount of blame for the results of the 2019 season. What he says is probably the truest reflection of how everyone feels about the coaches and the team.

It’s clear that Kuzma feels an affinity to Luke Walton and his staff, “The coaching staff means a lot. Those guys [Luke Walton and his staff] put me in the position to be where I am right now, you know, giving me the opportunity — right away Luke and the rest of the coaching staff really believed in me from day one, letting me be me. Coming from college nobody really knew who I was, I played a different style of game and they really helped unlock me and lock my confidence to a new level.”

Mike Muscala said in his exit interview that he really enjoyed playing for coach Walton, “He’s a really great guy, he knows his stuff.”

Let’s ask this question, why does there have to be a fall guy? Why couldn’t we have just kept this team together, not trade away all the talent the Lakers developed, that Luke’s coaching staff developed?

If fans could have just been supportive of the organization, things would have gone must smoother and better. But Magic Johnson felt a ton of pressure from the media and fans to produce immediately, even though at the beginning of the season he tried to set the “Be patient” tone. Fans didn’t listen and instead pushed hard!

Look at what happened with the Lakers great and beloved Magic! He took a gamble on Lonzo Ball, and he suffered multiple injuries. He brought in LeBron much to fans delight. But Bron Bron got injured, and so did his fellow starters. How were you going to get to the playoffs when your starters are all on the bench? Fans and the media couldn’t give the Lakers a break.

Jalen Rose mentioned something really important on ESPN today. He said that Magic realized he couldn’t bring in anyone to play with LeBron. But Magic also missed his old life where everyone loved him, where he helped the community when he could talk about his team and congratulate other players that are his friends.

Magic is going to be able to help Jeanie Buss like he always has. He will have more power outside the organization than inside. He can still give Buss advice as a “Big brother and ambassador” and be able to talk to all the players and coaches and GM’s whenever he wants.

He is tired of looking like the bad guy. He wants to have fun in life. Heck, don’t you just want to see him happy? See the players happy? See the front office happy? As a Lakers fan, please be patient going forward and support the team, and we will all be happier, we promise!

So fans had to blame someone and because of that fingers were pointed in all directions by the fans by the media. This caused fingers to be pointed at internally throughout the organization.

That said, the STAPLES Center was packed for the last game of the season as mostly the South Bay Lakers along with JaVale McGee, Mike Muscala and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope almost beat the playoff-bound Portland Trail Blazers.

Let that sink in. The bench, full of the Lakers starters in street clothes, was fully engaged in the game supporting the team and it was fun to watch. The Lakers fans really enjoyed it. That’s is what basketball is all about. “I say we went out with a bang for sure,” said South Bay Laker Jemerrio Jones. Let’s get back to having fun, shall we?