James Worthy Said The Lakers Are At Their Lowest Point In 40 Years After They Lost To A YMCA Team
The Lakers have had some lean years post-Magic. They owned the ‘80s. The ‘90s were ugly but they were able to lure Shaq away from Orlando implementing the novel concept of simply paying him more money. They also benefitted greatly from Adidas outright refusing to let Kobe play for anyone else. During this time the Bulls front office decided they were done winning, refused to re-sign Phil Jackson and left him up for grabs for whomever desired his services. Those three moments led to dominance in the 2000s followed by a horrid 2010s. The Lakers were rubbish during Kobe’s final years and they were even worse after he retired. Again, they benefitted from geography more than anything else and signed LeBron James, traded the rest of their assets for Anthony Davis, and went on to win the Disney Invitational. With that AAU Tournament victory came reignited expectations that the Lakers could once again win an NBA Championship.
That’s why James Worthy stands swaying in disgust tonight. That’s why he’s in disbelief the Lakers lost to, in his words, a YMCA pickup team. He’s not wrong, the Blazers gutted their roster yesterday, Dame is out, this should have been a walk-in-the-park double-digit victory for the Los Angeles Lakers. Nope. Prized offseason acquisition Russell Westbrook was “benched” amidst his ongoing riff with Frank Vogel. Top 75 player all time Anthony Davis somehow only took 11 shots. LeBron only took a single free throw. This effort comes on the heels of LeBron saying the Lakers aren’t in the same realm as the Milwaukee Bucks.
And this last season and a half is why people don’t take The Bubble ring seriously. Nor should they. There’s nothing we’ve seen from the LeBron era Lakers outside of Orlando that says they are of Championship caliber. After tonight’s loss their under total for the season officially cashed, we haven’t even played the All Star Game yet. Magic Johnson literally retired from working in the Lakers front office just so he could tweet about the Lakers and even he’s at a loss for words.
Lakers legends are speechless, at a loss for words, beside themselves, wont sleep a wink over this loss. Hopefully LeBron isn’t beating himself up too bad