The Los Angeles Lakers finished a tough preseason without winning a single game. The purple and gold went winless in six matches, raising a lot of eyebrows around Lakers Nation.
It’s true that they parted ways with players from last season’s roster, but the team landed several pieces that made them title favorites. They assembled a Big 3 with LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook.
Things look very favorable for them on paper, but we’re yet to see if that can translate into the court, and this team finds success early in the season. Seeing how things went during the preseason, the picture doesn’t look that promising for the Lakers.
After a 116-112 loss to the Sacramento Kings, the Lakers finished the preseason with zero wins and six defeats. The alarms are set at the Staples Center, even though LeBron threw water on the fire when he stated he didn’t care about preseason at this stage of his career.
This should be different, though, knowing how the Lakers fared the last time they couldn’t win a single preseason game. The last time this happened, the 17x NBA champions went 0-8. Back in 2012, after they assembled the infamous superteam of Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash.
At the time, Clarence Baldwin of Bleacher Report wrote that the Lakers concerned him after finishing their preseason run with a blowout loss.
Okay. After another blowout loss, the Lakers officially ended the preseason 0-8. That’s right, zero, zip, zilch, nada. The same amount of wins a third-party Presidential candidate will have in the modern era after the Nov. 6 election.
Yes, that has some people out there panicking. I will admit, after my initial post on the preseason after the fourth game, I wasn’t that worried. Ladies and gentlemen, I have some concerns now.
In case you don’t remember, that team was expected to make some noise in the league. With Bryant and Howard being two of the best players in the league at that moment, they looked poised to give the LeBron James-led Miami Heat a run for their money.
Well, none of that happened. They struggled to build chemistry, Kobe’s issues with Howard’s lack of work ethic and injuries prevented them from having a good campaign. They finished that season as the 7th seed in the Western Conference, getting swept in the first round of the playoff by the San Antonio Spurs.
This antecedent should scare the Lakers. They have a talented team, but the preseason struggles could predict what will happen with the squad this campaign.
