This was the most disappointing Lakers season of all time

As the NBA Playoffs are in full swing, Los Angeles Lakers fans must be wondering how the purple and gold are sitting at home and when they will wake up from this nightmare since the Lakers championship.

Even LeBron seems to be in his feels after missing the playoffs this season, recently tweeting:

It will be a tough task for James to make good on his promise to not miss the postseason if he stays with the Lakers based on their performance the last year and their roster moving forward. They have surprisingly missed the playoffs in two of his four seasons with the franchise and he had only missed the postseason two times before coming to Los Angeles.

LeBron and the Lakers were at the top of the NBA mountain after their 2020 title run, and it looked like they had a chance to win at least one more title in the next couple of seasons.

However, the mighty have fallen hard since that bubble championship and they have not been past the first round of the playoffs since. The Lakers only have four players left from that championship team, and they even fired the coach that helped win them that title.

Last offseason, we ranked the 2019-20 season as the second most disappointing season in franchise history, only behind the 2012-13 Lakers.

This past season would have to rank ahead of both of those Lakers teams in terms of disappointment.

The 2021-22 team had championship or bust aspirations and did not even make the play in game, those other two teams failed to meet similar expectations but at least made the playoffs.

The Lakers had the sixth-worst winning percentage in the history of their franchise this past season, and they had the 3rd worst record in the league after the All-Star break. They entered the season with the second-best betting odds to win the title, so those results were shocking to say the least.

Last years’ Lakers roster included five potential Hall of Fame players (LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, and Russell Westbrook), and no Lakers team has ever had more than five at one time. The other teams that had that many Hall of Famers reached the Finals, and this team did not make the top 10 seeds in their conference.

One of the biggest reasons why this season was such a flop was because those five potential Hall of Famers were past their prime and too old to be relied on to contribute on the level they once did. The only one that is under 30 is Davis and he was once again too brittle to make it through an NBA season, and it looks like his best basketball might already be behind him.

The Lakers did slightly miss on signing Howard and Anthony, but they were somehow two of their best additions from the offseason. They also went after a bunch of former Lakers like Trevor Ariza, Wayne Ellington, and Kent Bazemore and all three of them barely got off the bench most of the season.

Do not even get me started on another supposed gem free agent signing Kendrick Nunn who never played a game this season. Because of a bone bruise?!

Injuries were once again a big source of the disappointment for the second straight season. The supposed big three of James, Davis, and Westbrook barely played over 20 games together, yet they were only one game over .500 in that small sample size.

The overall age of the roster contributed those injury woes and their lack of consistent effort on a nightly basis. This was evident when players like Stanley Johnson and Wenyen Gabriel gave the Lakers a spark by just having a high motor on defense.

Another letdown came at the trade deadline when the Lakers had a chance to make some subtle tweaks or even trade Westbrook for John Wall and Christian Wood. Instead, they chose to to do nothing.

One of the teams trailing them in the standings at the time, the Pelicans, added C.J. McCollum. That was a major factor in them leaping past the Lakers for one of the play in spots.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment stemmed from the blockbuster trade they made before the season even started to bring in Westbrook. Part of the reason they made that move was because they thought he could carry the offensive load if Davis or LeBron missed games.

Instead, Westbrook had one of his worst scoring and shooting seasons but did have some of his best games when those two missed time, and it still was not enough to produce wins consistently when either Davis or LeBron was hurt. Even the biggest skeptics of the trade did not think Westbrook would have as bad of season as he did last year, and when it was all over, he hardly owned up to it.

Trading for him also depleted what was left of the Lakers’ young talent still on the roster. Not only did they get rid of solid young role players like Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in the trade, the move also gave them less money to bring back another young piece Alex Caruso.

That group of departures could have been a core group of role players that could have helped the Lakers contend for a sustained period. Now their future looks as bleak as it ever has.

At least when the Lakers had losing seasons from 2013-2018 there was hope for the future because you could see there was young talent there. With the Lakers going all in with the Westbrook deal, it depleted their assets and now they are left with a terrible mix of aging players.

The one young player they invested in, Talen Horton-Tucker, took a major step back this season and his trade value has plummeted since last offseason. The Lakers also chose to give him the money that could have been used to bring back Caruso and in hindsight that makes no sense because they were in win-now mode.

There are more questions than answers regarding the Lakers’ future moving forward and that makes it more disappointing than just one bad season. There have already been trade rumors involving Westbrook, LeBron, and Davis, so there is no telling what this team will look like in the next few seasons.

To make matters worse, the playoffs is littered with former Lakers that could still be contributing for them. Caruso is playing defensive ace for Chicago, Gary Payton II and Javale McGee are solid rotation pieces for their teams, and Brandon Ingram has been proving he can lead a team in the postseason.

This season will be forgotten, if the Lakers can stay healthy next year and return to being a contender in the West. On the other hand, even if they do have fewer injuries next season, it is hard to envision them winning the 20 more games it would take to jump back into the top half of the Western Conference.

If they want to add that many wins to their record next season, they are going to have to make a major change to this flawed roster. One way they could do that is to unload Westbrook for any contracts that other teams are eager to get rid of.

There have been rumblings that the Charlotte Hornets have interest in adding Westbrook to their backcourt with their young budding star Lamelo Ball. If the Lakers could ship Westbrook off to them for a proven player like Terry Rozier or Gordon Hayward they should do that in a heartbeat.

Trading for Rozier does not seem likely at this point, but a move for Hayward should be considered despite his injury history. If the Lakers did somehow flip Westbrook’s contract for Hayward, in theory, they would have given up their entire group of role players from their championship team for another aging veteran past his prime.

That only adds to the disappointment from this tragic season.