Los Angeles Lakers blown out of the play-in tournament by the Mavericks
By Ronald Agers
The Los Angeles Lakers are doing their best these days to blur the line between making a run for the postseason with playing out the string. The staff of Lake Show Life has already started counting down to April 10th when the season ends on the biggest debacle possibly in the history of the franchise.
Why do we say that? It seems like forever, but does anyone remember what Magic Johnson said earlier this month if the Lakers don’t make it out of the play-in game?
How about not making the play-in tournament at all? After the Lake Show continued their master class on how to blow leads to bad teams by losing to the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday, they made sure there was not a repeat performance on Tuesday.
The Dallas Mavericks ran off to a 30-point lead in the first half and the TNT announcers started discussing matching suits and gummy bears sticking to small intestines for up to six months. In the spirit of Marv Albert, “This was extensive garbage time” for everyone involved from the players, to TNT broadcasting the game to anyone that had to cover this.
LeBron James did not play due to that awful ankle sprain he suffered on Sunday and his teammates played like they had similar injuries as they got rolled 128-110. It wasn’t even that close.
Here’s where the Lakers are as of now. It’s a fluid situation because they will probably get blown out by the Utah Jazz too. In other words, this will get worse.
- The Los Angeles Lakers are now out of the play-in tournament after San Antonio won the night before.
- The Spurs now own the tiebreaker over the Lakers.
- The Pelicans now own the tiebreaker over the Lakers.
- Meaning… the Lakers have to finish higher than both teams record-wise…PERIOD!
- But to do that, the Lakers have to win more than two straight games which they haven’t accomplished in three months!
The Lakers gave up 82 points in the first half which is the highest total since 1959 when the franchise wasn’t in Los Angeles yet. These were the dark times in Minneapolis between George Mikan’s retirement and their desperate chase to get Elgin Baylor. In other words, this was around the time that the Lakers almost went out of business…forever.
For now, the Lakers should just go out of business for this season because they have no business embarrassing themselves like this.
Season finale is on April 10th. Make plans because the offseason could be worse.
The good from the Los Angeles Lakers’ loss:
Oh, it’s bad too! Malik Monk is paving his way to a rich exit to another NBA team!
Malik Monk was one of maybe two or three that looked like they cared with a stat line of 28 points, 4 rebounds and 2 assists. If anyone thinks that Lik’ Lik’ is going to gamble his career with this franchise at $2 million waiting for the big payday, there are some statues out in front of the Crypto.com Arena that the staff of Lake Show Life can sell you for $5,000 right now. Get them while supplies last. One thing, you have to come and pick them up. Please pay in cash!
Russell Westbrook is building back his stock so he can leave this Titanic franchise too!
Slowly but surely, Russ is playing a better brand of basketball. Maybe his motivation is to showcase his ability to play off the ball and become more efficient. He finished with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. Run Russ…RUN!
The game ended…
Nuff said.