Los Angeles Lakers: 3 Lessons from the win over New York Knicks

The Los Angeles Lakers look to bounce back after their worst loss of the season against the Boston Celtics. LeBron James and AD came back strong at times in Madison Square Garden. It wasn’t pretty, but the Lakers won. 

Every once in a while Los Angeles Lakers fans, sports can be paralleled. No matter what the sport it is the narrative can be transcended. The easiest narrative that all sports can relate to is hitting rock bottom. In New York, hitting rock bottom has been a hot bed for numerous teams over the years.

Let Lake Show Life break it down for you. Follow us now.

Let’s take the New York Giants in the late 70’s. They were playing the Philadelphia Eagles late in the season. All they had to do was hike the ball and fall down, run out-of-bounds or hand the ball off. Almost anything. The options were endless. But this happened.

https://twitter.com/nflnetwork/status/1175203958635270145

The New York Giants fumbled the ball away and the Eagles won the game in the single most iconic blunders in NFL history. This is when the Giants hit rock bottom.

• They fired the offensive coordinator the very next day.
• Then they fired the head coach and GM after the season.
• Used their draft pick on a linebacker named Lawrence Taylor.
• From there, the franchise made wholesale changes and won two Super Bowls under new management and head coach Bill Parcells. 

Now before Lakers fans start thinking the website has started assisting in this year’s Super Bowl coverage, here’s where this time in history parallels with the Los Angeles Lakers. Their rock bottom moment happened last season in the same city of New York.

The last time the Los Angeles Lakers played in Madison Square Garden, it was their rock bottom with LeBron James going down with the ship. Come to think of it, he was the one that sunk the ship almost by himself. The game featured two bad teams full of bad basketball.

Like the Giants, the Lakers should have won the game. All they had to do was basically execute something and they would win. But then LeBron had his rock bottom moment in a Lakers uniform.

LeBron James had his worst shooting quarter in his career missing 11-of-15 shots in the fourth quarter. The Knicks used his futility to go on a 13-1 run to lose the game.

The game would forever be remembered by just one play.

Walt Frazier made his opinion known while the camera was focusing on LeBron James sitting at the end of the bench during a timeout. The opinion was such big news, Frazier felt the need to make a statement the next game.

"“You’re above that, you’re better than that. You can’t be like the proletariat, you’re The King,” Frazier said during Monday’s MSG telecast of Knicks against Toronto. “That’s the title he wanted. People say he’s like our Muhammad Ali. He speaks for black people. He has a school where he’s teaching kids to do the right thing.” “My thing is the NBA is like the Olympics, there’s a torch that is passed,” Frazier said. “From Russell to Chamberlain to… So when you’re the King and LeBron is the King and the best player in the game, you can’t be like a common player. Like if that was some other player I wouldn’t have said anything. But when you’re the face of the league man, you can’t do what other people do. You have to do the right thing. And millions of kids that saw that will say, well if LeBron did that it’s okay for me to do that. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”"

With “The ship be sinkin” to use the famous phrase of former Knicks guard, Michael Ray Richardson, the Lakers made a ton of changes of their own.

• Magic Johnson resigned about two hours before the last game of the season.
• Luke Walton got fired about 48 hours later.
• The Los Angeles Lakers made a trade to get Anthony Davis.
• The team is firing on all cylinders under Frank Vogel as possible favorites to win the NBA title.

LeBron James won’t admit it but this was the day his “Revenge Season” was born. No one believed he could get back to the level he’s playing this season. Furthermore, the debates were not if LeBron would get back, but who the replacement for the future of the NBA.

Oh what a difference a few months can make. On Wednesday, when the Lakers came back to New York, LeBron made it clear to not only the fans at Madison Square Garden, but the NBA world who runs the NBA circles leading the Lakers to a 100-92 win.

There’s not much to say about the New York Knicks other than the fact that David Fizdale is probably one of the few people on planet Earth to be happy the day he got fired. Instead of being paid to coach a team that is woefully constructed, he gets to get paid to watch the sinking ship with the rest of us.

Finally, to any real Los Angeles Lakers fans out there who want to be able to discern the casuals, Lake Show Life is here to help you out. Anyone that believes that it was a mistake to extend Julius Randle with a big contract, those are not fans. Run.

The day Magic Johnson let Randle walk was a baby step in the right direction for the riches this team is enjoying now.

Let’s get to Lake Show Life Lessons.