In October, Lebron James and the Lakers were the top favoritesto reach the NBA finals. Not even seven months have passed and the Los Angeles team has harvested one of the black years that will be remembered for a long time in a franchise that has won a whopping 17 championship rings. It is true that there is a curse appears as a disease every nine years and that usually ends in a ridiculous of biblical dimensions in the yellow team.
The common denominator of the Lakers curse appears when they’re trying to make a better team than the rest of the NBA can afford. Usually this set collapses causing the dissolution of the project due to the lack of understanding between its stars. In the case of this season, the arrival of Russell Westbrook, Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony dynamited a squad that also had Rajon Rondo and DeAndre Jordan as players who jumped ship in the middle of the season.
LeBron he had managed to bring many of his great friends forming a dream team, but you had to be supportive and play as a team. That objective has obviously not been achieved with so many roosters in the same pen and the numbers do not lie. With a balance of 31 wins and 48 losses to date, the Lakers can say without a doubt that they are a real flop and we’ll see if this stumble doesn’t end with more stars out. Westbrook looks doomed, while Anthony Davis could be traded for a young superstar.
The problem in this case, says the Los Angeles press, has been in allowing LeBron to act as General Manager with fatal consequences on the field. Since the one from Ohio has been in the team, the results have been tenth in the first season, champion in the NBA bubble, seventh last year and eleventh in this one in the Western Conference. Many dare to compare this drift of LeBron with that of Michael Jordan in the Washington Wizards.
The Lakers have learned nothing from previous curses. On 2013the franchise added the pairing of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol to former MVP Steve Nash and his 2011 Finals rival Dwight Howard. The result was that each one ended up on their own and that the franchise did not go beyond the first round of the Play-Offs being swept by the San Antonio Spurs. Only Kobe Bryant would follow the project in the long term.
On 2004the angelenos saw as their pair of stars and triple champions, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, they were added two old bounced rockers from the Jordan era like Karl Malone and Gary Payton. There was plenty of talent everywhere, but in the final that year they were swept away by the greater intensity and hunger of the Detroit Pistons, falling 4-1. That project also went to waste, leaving Kobe Bryant as the only standard the following year.
We will see what happens after this disastrous season, but the precedents about the curse are clear: the beach bar must be dismantled. LeBron James has assured that he will follow in his son’s footsteps as soon as he is declared eligible for the 2023 Draft. Maybe the franchise has plans to get the firstborn or maybe not. What is evident is that ‘The King’ has to get away from the offices and focus on the pitch.