The Los Angeles Lakers' season, for all intents and purposes, ended with a crucial loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on March 2nd.
Every game they've played in the interim has been undertaken with the knowledge that winning and losing is no longer of utmost importance. After all, it's not like the Lakers had much player development to do, either, with both Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball sidelined by season-ending injuries.
Friday's game against the Brooklyn Nets, then, was about pride and appearances more than anything else. But unfortunately for Los Angeles, after a 111-106 loss to Brooklyn, the reality of its dispiriting season came to a head when the team was officially eliminated from playoff contention — ensuring LeBron James would sit on the postseason sidelines for the first time since 2005.
D'Angelo Russell and the Brooklyn #Nets have eliminated LeBron James and the Los Angeles #Lakers from playoff contention. Poetic justice.
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) March 23, 2019
Replace any normal all-time great with LeBron James, and this outcome shouldn't have been hard to see coming. The only reason most league followers were optimistic about the Lakers' playoff chances before the season tipped off was due to the presence of an ironman who had previously made eight consecutive NBA Finals. That wasn't the barometer for James and his team in 2018-19, not even close, which says as much about Los Angeles' roster issues as it does the superiority of the Western Conference.
The last time LeBron James missed the NBA Playoffs:
– J.R. Smith, Iguodala, and Livingston were rookies
– Kyrie was 13 years old
– Steph was a junior in HS
– YouTube launched
– Destiny's Child split up
– Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston divorcedhttps://t.co/MlKl6GtoWF— RingerNBA (@ringernba) February 20, 2019
A different timeline exists in which James didn't strain his hamstring on Christmas — missing the next 17 games, a stretch that pushed the Lakers from fourth in the Western Conference to ninth. But even if they had made the playoffs, would it change the fact that this mismatched team was always doomed to fail? No way.
For the sake of James' legacy, though, another postseason appearance certainly would have been helpful regardless.
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