They deserve this and you know it.
The Lakers will finish with the fourth-worst record in the NBA. They have barely crawled over the 20-win mark. This is the second straight season for which the Lakers will miss the playoffs.
You may be tempted to feel bad for the Lakers or Lakers fans. Do not do this. You must never feel sympathy for the Lakers. This is why.
The Lakers are the winningest team ever
The Lakers have about 50 more wins that the Celtics all-time, and trail only the Spurs in winning percentage (.616 to .609). The difference here, though, is that the Spurs joined the NBA in 1976-77 and the Lakers have been around since 1948-49.
Think about that for a second. The Lakers have been around for 67 years and their record is better than .600. That is essentially averaging more than 50 wins per season. The Knicks have been around 69 years and only have 15 individual seasons better than the Lakers' all-time mark. The Wizards have been around for 54 seasons and have just five individual seasons above .500.
It has been at least a decade since the Kings, Timberwolves (11 years), Bucks (15 years), Nets (14 years) or Sixers (15 years) have had a .600 season. The Charlotte franchise hasn't had a .600 season since before the Hornets moved to New Orleans. The Raptors, now in their 20th season, have never had a .600 season.
Run that back. The Lakers have an all-time winning percentage of .609 over 67 years. The Raptors, now 20 years old, have never had a .600 season. (Toronto would need to sweep its last four games of this season to get there.)
The Lakers average a championship every 4th season
The Lakers have 16 championships in 67 seasons. That's an average of roughly one every four years. Here's a list of teams without a single championship and how long they have existed in NBA years.
Suns, 47 seasons
Cavaliers, 45 seasons
Clippers, 45 seasons
Jazz, 41 seasons
Nuggets, 39 seasons
Pacers, 39 seasons
Nets, 39 seasons
Magic, 26 seasons
Timberwolves, 26 seasons
Hornets, 25 seasons
Grizzlies, 20 seasons
Raptors, 20 seasons
Pelicans, 13 seasons
The Lakers average a championship every fourth year. The Suns have been around 47 years without a single title.
Other teams have championships only in their distant past, and often in other cities. The Kings technically won a title 64 seasons ago ... in Rochester. The Hawks won a title 57 years ago ... in St. Louis.
The Bucks, Knicks, Warriors, Blazers, Wizards and Sixers currently have title droughts of at least 32 seasons. In the past 32 seasons, the Lakers have eight championships.
A 16-year-old Lakers fan has been alive for five championships. A 41-year-old Knicks fan has been alive for zero championships.
The Lakers can outspend every team in the NBA
If L.A. wanted to, it could outspend every other team in the NBA in every facet of the organization and still turn a profit. The team's local television deal pays out an average of $150 million per season. For comparison's sake, other local deals have been below $10 million in recent years. (The Hornets were making $7 million locally when the Lakers signed their deal with Time Warner Cable.) The Kings' new deal pays around $35 million a year and is considered by many to be a huge, lucrative boon. The Celtics' "massive" new deal pays $60 million per season.
The Lakers' deal is more than double that. Add in some of the highest gate receipts in the league (behind only the Knicks), a very good lease deal on STAPLES Center, plus huge sponsorship contracts and the Lakers are basically a private mint for the Buss family.
Yes, there is a salary cap on players that in many ways limits the effectiveness of spending tens of millions more than rivals. But there's no cap on spending for coaches, trainers, scouts, analysts or practice facilities. If the Lakers wanted to, they could hire the most expensive general manager in the NBA and an army of assistants. They could hire the most expensive coach in the league and the best-paid assistant coaches, as many of them as they want. They could stick a hyperbaric chamber in an Apache and loan it out to Kobe so he doesn't have to ride team buses from hotels to the arena on the road. They could probably fund the science to get Kobe a cybernetic leg that allows him to dunk like he was 19 again, and they could probably afford to pay off the NBA to allow it.
No, they can't go over the maximum player salary to lure a top free agent. But there's a whole host other ways they can, have and could again leverage their ridiculous lucre to dominate. This is not a team that has to hire Byron Scott. They could reanimate John Wooden and give him Phil Jackson's old chair if they wanted.
The Lakers do not know pain
This is the second time in 45 full-length seasons the Lakers will win fewer than 30 games. (The NBA season has been 82 games since 1967-68, with two lockout-related exceptions.) So two seasons with less than 30 wins for the Lakers in the 82-game era. Two really bad seasons. The Cavaliers have had 12 seasons like that. Dallas had almost an entire decade of them in the '90s. The Warriors have had ten. The Clippers have had 22 if you count Buffalo and San Diego, and 16 if you don't.
Let's review: Since 1968, when the NBA moved to an 82-game schedule, the Lakers have now had two season with at least 53 losses and the Clippers franchise has had 22. (And the Clippers franchise didn't even exist until the 1971 season!)
The Lakers have made the playoffs 60 times in 67 seasons. On average they miss the playoffs once every 9-10 seasons. They are almost never in the lottery. Yet they have managed to feature Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Shaq and Kobe Bryant.
The Lakers deserve this
I look at the standings, and I see the Lakers at 20 wins. It's now April, and I do not see an entity that requires or deserves sympathy. I do not pity the Lakers. This is what the Lakers deserve. Develop your humility, Lakers and Lakerkind. Realize that while this is new and shocking for you, losing is a way of life for most NBA teams. Misery in March is is a once-in-a-generation event for the Lakers. It is a perennial concern for some of us.
Consider your 20-win season, dear Lakers fans, a gift from the Basketball Gods so that the next time you are granted a place in the winner's circle (hopefully never) you appreciate it just a little bit more. Embrace this incredible, embarrassing failure and make it your own.
Set aside your commemorative championship t-shirt and ask your local screenprinter to design a Jim Buss shirsey with the Lakers' winning percentage (currently .256) as the uniform number. Turn the bright yellow Lakers flag on the antenna of your 1996 Celica upside down. Add a single tear to the tattoo of Kobe's face you wear on the small of your back.
Acknowledge, accept, embrace and live the Lakers now as you did in 2000 and 2001 and 2002 and 2009 and 2010. It is, my dearest friends in Lakerdom, exactly what you deserve.
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