Los Angeles Lakers: Use Their Illusion
This past decade, the franchise has lived in the shadow of its former greatness.
Oregon Trail Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers and beyond have all witnessed decades of incredible basketball from the Los Angeles Lakers. Championships (in-season and the real thing). Winning Time. The three-ring Kobe/Shaq/Phil circus. Threepeats, repeats, and Bubble Chips. There have been a lot of core memories made for Lakers fans throughout the years, but we are in a rough stretch right now. Dr. Buss passed away in 2013, and the franchise has not been right since then. This is the root of the issue with the Lakers. The Buss children, the stewards of his estate, have stained the purple and tarnished the gold.
First, it was Jimmy Buss taking over basketball operations and steering it into the franchise into a series of its all-time worst seasons in team history. Then, Jeanie Buss fired her older brother in 2017 and put franchise icon Magic Johnson in charge. She fired and hired the wrong people to help run the team, like Rob Pelinka and every second-tier coach they’ve run with since the failed D’Antoni era. Even the aforementioned Bubble Chip was nothing more than an anomaly during this reign of dumpster fires. They should have built on their successful championship blueprint, but the front office wanted to get cute, and they just fucked everything up.
Fire coach. Hire coach. Fire him, again. How many years before the Lakers win a title again?
It seems a long ways away, like an astronaut floating in space, reaching out for Earth’s gravity as the distance between grows. The NBA, specifically the Boston Celtics and two thirds of the Western Conference, is Earth, orbiting around the sun and evolving. The Lakers are the lonely astronaut, drifting into the void. On Earth, life goes on.
If Lakers fans are to assume that the franchise really, really wanted Danny Hurley, as all reports about it stated, then his decision to stay at U Conn is a shart stain on the Lakers reputation. The aura of winning that once surrounded the Lakers is nothing but an illusion now. It is a perception that this is the same franchise that traded for Kobe and signed Shaq in the same off-season; that drafted Magic and Worthy to run with Cap; that gave is buzzer-beaters worthy of being called magic. This version of the Lakers is not them and hasn’t been since the kids took over, and I don’t believe the team will return to those glory days because I don’t believe in its leadership. I don’t think the drive to win is for Jeanie and Jimmy what it was for Jerry. I have no inside knowledge of this, but I have eyes, and I’ve seen what has and hasn’t been happening to my beloved Lakers.
Churning through coaches is a big part of the problem because there’s no established culture and identity. Pieces keep moving in and out of the locker room, and the players can’t unite behind something larger than themselves. There is no quick fix for this, and the talented across the Association is just too damn good. Free agents aren’t going to want to sign with the Lakers because they aren’t what they used to be — a winning culture. Excellence. They are a mess. They are hoarders of ancient memories of what it used to be like to rock the purple and gold.
There are no saviors on the horizon, and maybe Hurley was not going to be that for the Lakers, but maybe being hung out to dry at the alter by your latest coaching crush will put things into perspective for Lakers management, and the slow rebuild to glory can begin as early as next season.
