Los Angeles Lakers: 3 critical things we learned from the seeding games

1. The layoff and bubble negatively impacted the Los Angeles Lakers more than expected

Heading into the Orlando bubble I was sure that the Los Angeles Lakers would be the one team that was prepared the most for this experience. The team has some of the best off-court chemistry in the entire league and seemingly has a legitimate brotherhood, which makes a difficult situation like this easier.

The team is also led by LeBron James, who is seemingly defying modern science with every added season that he plays at an elite level. If there was going to be a team in shape and looking great, it was the Lakers.

That was not the case. While the Lakers were not the only team to struggle, they certainly were the highlighting team, at least as far as the pundits are concerned. They set a new season-low in field goal percentage three-times, had a woeful stretch in shooting the three-ball and looked pretty uninterested and out of sync at times.

Of course, that is going to happen when these games didn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things and were more about staying healthy and establishing rotations, but still. It is hard to find a lot to be excited about from these seeding games.

The team’s title chances definitely feel lower now than they did back in March. Part of that is because of the trouble that the Lakers have had in the bubble thus far.