Los Angeles Lakers: A timeline of how they rebuilt their team
By Ethan Temkin
2012-2013 Season
The 2012-2013 season started for the Lakers as it usually does; with optimism. The team had made two blockbuster trades, trading away multiple future first-round picks for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash in an effort to add superstar talent to the already accomplished duo of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol.
Unfortunately, that optimism quickly turned sour as the worst-case scenarios started to manifest themselves.
Injuries quickly started to pile up, first with Dwight Howard; who never quite recovered from a back surgery he had in the offseason; then with Steve Nash, who suffered a fracture in his fibula in only his second regular season game. The team also fired coach Mike Brown after a 1-4 start, replacing him with Mike D’Antoni.
With a depleted, aging roster, Kobe Bryant had no choice but to put the team on his back in an attempt to drag this Lakers team to the playoffs. After a stretch of games near the end of the season in which he averaged 45 minutes per-game, Kobe’s body finally gave out on him and he tore his Achilles tendon in a game against the Warriors, weeks before the start of the postseason.
With their star player out, the Lakers were swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. This marked an end to this current run of Lakers dominance and left the future of the Lakers franchise in limbo.