The Los Angeles Lakers had big expectations entering this season. They made some big moves in the offseason to improve their bid for the championship, which were having good results for them, the best team in the West before the coronavirus outbreak led to the suspension of the season last month.
The 16-time NBA champions were at a good pace, beating big rivals before the COVID-19 hit the league with Rudy Gobert testing positive for the disease. There have been contradicting reports suggesting the date for the league to resume action, but nothing is certain right now. People have started to worry about this since this season was expected to be a big one after all the changes we lived in the summer.
Not only fans but players have shown their concern about this, including LeBron James, who claimed he won’t feel any kind of ‘closure’ in the case that the NBA decided to cancel the season. Talking with The Los Angeles Times, James said:
“How do you assess what’s going on over the last three weeks or however long this pandemic has been going on? It’s unnatural,” James said during a Zoom video call with about two dozen reporters Wednesday. “It’s something that’s never happened before. Some of you guys are older than me, probably never seen this happen before. You just kind of take all the information you have on a day-to-day basis.”
Given all the expectations they had before the start of the season, LeBron doesn’t think he and his teammates will feel completely proud of all the things they did on the court. This team was set to win it all this season, and they made a big case for that with huge victories against the Milwaukee Bucks, the team with the best record in the league, and the Los Angeles Clippers, their biggest rivals in the West.
“I will have some satisfaction of being with my brothers, being with my guys, thinking about some of the road trips that we had, thinking about some of the games we lost, some of the games we won, some of the games we overcame, and then everything we’ve been going through this season,” James said. “Just the ups and downs not only on the floor but off the floor, everything that we’ve had to endure as Laker faithful, us as players and coaching staff and an organization.
“Closure? No, but to be proud of what we were able to accomplish to this point, I’ll be able to look back and say we did something special in that small period of time.”
Right now it’s all about health; the health of players, staffers, and fans. Of course, we all would like to see the league making its return sooner rather than later, but several factors are involved and things that aren’t under the league’s control.
We’re pretty sure Lakers fans and the players want to see their team getting that 17th title, but first, all this situation needs to be controlled.
