Los Angeles Lakers | Pace and Space

Magic’s Bridesmaids: The 1983 San Antonio Spurs

January 18, 2023 - by Fox Doucette

The San Antonio Spurs have, in recent years, been awful—they are on their way to their fourth straight losing season, and their fourth time missing the playoffs in as many years. This is a franchise that until 2021 had never missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons. One of the most successful franchises in the history of the post-merger league has become a joke. Even before the legendary run of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker, the Spurs made it to the Western Conference Finals in back-to-back years in 1982 and ’83. Both times, they got eaten for lunch by …

Analysis

Magic’s Bridesmaids: The 1982 San Antonio Spurs

January 16, 2023 - by Fox Doucette

The San Antonio Spurs have had tremendous success as a franchise. Besides the legendary run of Tim Duncan, the Spurs have always been among the class of the league ever since coming over from the ABA. But like every other team that wasn’t the Lakers or Rockets in the 1980s, San Antonio never sniffed the NBA Finals. They fell short twice in consecutive years in 1982 and ’83 in the Western Conference Finals. So let’s take a look at those teams and see how they were similar…and different. Could they have beaten the Sixers in either of those years? We’ll …

Analysis

Magic’s Bridesmaids: The 1980 Seattle SuperSonics

January 15, 2023 - by Fox Doucette

Over the next three weekends, we’re going to take a look at all eight victims of Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers as the team from Tinseltown made eight NBA Finals and won five championships, starting with the 1980 Seattle SuperSonics. After all, the 1970s were so wide open that the West sent six different teams to the Finals between 1973 and 1978, and the 1990s were similarly up in the air as Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls defeated five different opponents to get their six rings and another two teams came out of the West to play …

Editorial

Coming Soon: The 1980s Western Conference Bridesmaids

January 10, 2023 - by Fox Doucette

Been watching a lot of Hardwood Classics recently, and it got me thinking of what happened to all those Western Conference Finals teams that Magic Johnson and the Lakers beat on their way to eight NBA Finals between 1980 and 1989. The only team to best Magic and friends in the entire decade was the ’86 Rockets. Michael Jordan and the Bulls faced five different Finals opponents for their six championships because after 1991, Magic was no longer there to serve as gatekeeper. What if the ’80s had been that wide open? Who would Larry Bird and Julius Erving and …

Analysis

The Los Angeles Lakers’ Worst Season: 2016

October 2, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

I really wish I didn’t have to write this one. Kobe Bryant‘s farewell tour in 2015-16 came as the Los Angeles Lakers descended into full Dumpster fire status. Byron Scott, a guy synonymous with “game passed him by”, coached this outfit. Kobe’s teammates were as bad as any he had between his two title runs. But ball don’t lie. The 17-65 season marks not only the only time the Lakers ever failed to win 20 games, the period from 2014 to 2017 marks the only four years the Lakers failed to win 30 games in their entire history in Los …

Editorial

With the #LOLakers Dead, What’s LeBron Got Left?

April 3, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

LeBron James is, at this point, playing purely for his legacy, putting any finishing touches he can on his GOAT argument before age catches up with him for good and sends him into retirement. Bron’s got four rings, including a ring in Cleveland in 2016 that came for his hometown against a team that went 73-9 in the regular season and had a 3-1 lead in the Finals. He’s got a “career triple double”, having notched his 10,000th rebound and 10,000th assist during this 2021-22 season to put the finishing touches on an accomplishment that no other player in NBA …

Analysis

The Lakers’ Russell Westbrook Problem

January 22, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

For the past few seasons, it has become an annual event at some point around the All-Star break to point out the problems that Russell Westbrook has caused for his teams. In 2019, the question was whether Westbrook could finally break out of his “the best you’re going to get out of this guy is 48 wins and a first-round playoff exit” problem in the absence of Kevin Durant. The Oklahoma City Thunder stood at 26-18 on Jan. 17 after a loss to the Lakers, and while they would win 11 of their next 12 contests to go to 37-19, …

Analysis

The Los Angeles Lakers’ Best Season: 1972

October 3, 2021 - by Fox Doucette - 1 Comment

The Los Angeles Lakers have had several franchise high points. In the 1950s, when they still played in Minneapolis, they were the league’s first true powerhouse, winning the title the year they joined the BAA in 1949, then going on to win four more championships in the next five years. They missed the playoffs only once in 12 seasons in Minneapolis, and the very next year—1960—they ended up in the NBA Finals, losing to Boston and starting for real that historic rivalry. In the 1980s, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and a cast of characters rotating through the rest of their …

Editorial

The NBA Play-In Games Were Pointless And Dumb

May 30, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

LeBron James, talking about the play-in tournament that his Lakers were unable to avoid as a result of tiebreakers in their three-way tie for fifth place in the Western Conference, said “whoever thought of it should be fired.” For the Lakers, this made sense, because in any normal season where the top eight teams simply get into the playoffs, James and Anthony Davis could’ve been shut down for the regular season, and if the Lakers finished seventh, so what? They’d still be in the playoffs with no concern. As it stood, they had to make a stretch run to stay …

Editorial

A Wild 2021 Finish Brews in the Western Conference

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021 - by Fox Doucette

Through games of May 2, the Western Conference features a three-way tie at 36-28 for the 5 seed with just eight games to go in the regular season. And as alluded to in last week’s “6 is the New 8”, this is a fantastic year to have such a three-car pileup on the NBA standings highway. Most of the time, when you get a tie across a bunch of mid-seeds, it’s just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as all that hangs in the balance is who gets to host whom in what ultimately meaningless Game 1 of a …