The Los Angeles Lakers are wrapping up one of the most disappointing seasons in their franchise history. The Lakers are officially out of playoff contention. If you’re keeping count at home, they’ve failed to reach the postseason 2 out of the four years that LeBron James has been a Laker. So that now leads us to this next question, is this indeed the most disappointing season in Laker history? So I’m in opinion, and keep in mind… I’m speaking as a Lakers fan, there are only two years that can compete with this disaster of a season. And I’m not including any season where they actually made the Finals. So I’m not including the 2004 season or the 1969 season. Yes, these were teams that were loaded with talent, but they did make the Finals. They were bitter Finals losses, and that’s why we as Lakers fans, have a negative perception of that season. But when you come that close to winning the title, I can’t put you in the top 3. So let’s get with the only two seasons that I believe are comparable.
The first one that we’re going to talk about is the 1980-81 season. Now you may look at this season and say, well this team won 54 games in the regular season, and they had the second-best record in the western conference. How is that disappointing? The main reason is that they lost in the first round to the Houston Rockets. We’ll get to that in a second. But when you dig deeper into the details of this season, then you’ll see why this team never even had a chance at repeating as champions. In the previous season, the Lakers won 60 games and only lost two times in the playoffs on their road to the Finals. This was a team that was loaded with offensive weapons. You had the tandem of Magic Johnson and Norm Nixon in the backcourt, who were excellent distributors. Jamaal Wilkes, who was as smooth as they come, was a walking bucket. He averaged over 20 PPG for the team, while shooting north of 53% from the field. And then, of course, you had the MVP of the 1980 season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And keep in mind, Magic Johnson was only a rookie that season. So this team was only going to get better.
So what happened? Pat Riley gave us some insight on that season in what ended up being one of the best basketball books you’ll ever read. In his book titled, “Showtime: Inside the Lakers’ Breakthrough Season”, Pat Riley infamously talked about an important basketball principle that prevents teams from duplicating a previous successful season. He called it, “the disease of more”. He stated that “success is often the first step toward disaster” and that defending champions often fail the following season because every player who returns wants more playing time, more shots per game, and more money. According to reports, that’s exactly what was happening in the locker room.
Check out what Anthony Cotton wrote for Sports Illustrated in 1981, “They had lost their last two regular-season games, and stories were circulating that some L.A. players were less than enchanted with the ballyhooed return to the lineup of Magic Johnson, who had missed 45 games following knee surgery. Norm Nixon, who went from shooting guard to point guard and then back to shooting guard, was quoted as saying the changes were disruptive to his game. Other reports indicated that several Lakers were jealous over the media attention given Magic’s comeback.” Anthony cotton continued saying this, “Johnson was crushed by the talk, and he stayed up until five in the morning after the first-game loss to the Rockets in a state of bewilderment. “I try to give everybody the ball, keep everyone happy, but I guess it’s never enough,” Magic said. “I never heard of this kind of situation on a winning team. Everybody can’t get the pub. Before me it was Kareem, and if they weren’t getting it then, I don’t know how they could want it now.”
And then, check out what a New York Times article said in that same year, “On the negative side, Jim Chones, a veteran forward, was angered when he and Michael Cooper were replaced in the starting lineup by Jim Brewer and Butch Carter. A teammate, quoted anonymously, said, ”How can he bench our best big man?” And even Kareem was reported to causing some rift in the locker room, and he experienced a drop in production from his previous MVP season. The same article says this, “This season, the Lakers have often appeared to be a different team. Abdul-Jabbar has been criticized for an alleged lack of motivation and has gone through a rare shooting slump. Starters have been benched and unhappy, and major player changes have been considered.” The article continues saying, “He missed a practice last November and reportedly told teammates he needed to catch up on his sleep. A teammate, who asked to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying: ”He doesn’t want to play. He wants to retire. He’s always joking about it, saying, ‘I wish there was somebody to replace me.”’
It was just a drama-filled season. And the internal problems that the Lakers were having made this team seem less invincible. Think of the Brooklyn Nets this year, and how their internal problems made them an inferior team from the previous season. So once the playoffs began, the Lakers were expected to at least get past the first round. However, the Lakers lost to a Rockets team, that went 40-42 in the regular season, in a shortened three-game series. In the series-clinching game 3, Magic Johnson had one of the worst performances of his career. He ended the game with 10 points on 2/14 shooting. That set up one of the most improbable playoff runs in the history of the game, and I’m thinking of doing a video about the 1981 Rockets soon. But it also set up one of the most shocking playoff defeats in modern-day history. Changes needed to be made, and it eventually led to the Pat Riley-era of the Showtime Lakers in the following season. So it ended up being a good thing, but at the time… you were wondering about the future of this team. And unlike some of the early playoff exits that the Lakers suffered in the past, this Lakers team had everyone healthy for the playoffs. They weren’t missing any key pieces. So that’s why this particular year was very disappointing.
The last season that we’re going to talk about is the 2012-13 season. This was a season that was filled with promise. The Lakers added Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to their roster in the offseason, and it opened up exciting possibilities. Many people were predicting that we were going to finally see a Kobe and LeBron Finals matchup, that also included 6 other future hall of fame players going head to head. The Miami Heat held their end of the bargain, but the Lakers were struggling right from the get-go. The Lakers started the season going 1-4, and that resulted in Mike Brown getting fired. Then Bernie Bickerstaff took over, and the Lakers went 4-1 for the next five games. It seemed like just letting all these experienced and championship-winning players take the lead and letting them play their game was the way to go. But then the Lakers infamously hired Mike D’Antoni over Phil Jackson to coach this team, and then all hell broke loose. A lot of it was due to injuries. Steve Nash got hurt in just the second game of the season and didn’t come back until the game before Christmas. Dwight Howard suffered a serious back injury and postponed surgery to try to compete for a championship. There was a lot of pressure from his teammates, more specifically Kobe Bryant, to play through the pain. He did not look himself, and he was obviously hurting. In fact, Ron Artest said this according to Bleacher Report, “I don’t even know how the hell he played”. We also have to take into account the injury that Pau Gasol suffered that caused him to miss nearly half the season.
But aside from all the injuries, there were a lot of issues that were going on inside the locker room. Pau Gasol was not happy with his role within the system. There were also times when he was benched in crunch time of many games, and that caused even more friction between Gasol and Mike D’Antoni. And then Dwight Howard was unhappy with his role. He was complaining throughout the season that he wasn’t getting enough touches. There were also some other concerns that he had with the offense. Mike D’Antoni told the Los Angeles Daily News that Howard envisioned himself as a dominant low-post scorer whom the offense should run through rather than a pick-and-roll player. D’Antoni thought that Steve Nash and Dwight Howard would dominate the league with their pick and roll tandem, but Howard was simply not buying in. So with all those factors, the Lakers struggled to maintain a winning record. It wasn’t until the end of the season that the Lakers started picking things up, but it ended with the biggest blow of all. Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles after he tried to will his team to the playoffs. That injury ended all talks of the Lakers making any sort of run in the playoffs, it ended Kobe’s prime, and it ended the Lakers dominating stretch of relevancy for the next 6 years.
So which of these three seasons do you think is the most disappointing? In my opinion, I think the 2021-22 season tops them all. The Lakers at least made the playoffs in 1981 and 2013. But for this season, we’re talking about a team that had championship aspirations for some NBA experts. The move of adding Russell Westbrook was a controversial one for Laker fans. For people like me, we hated it from the beginning and thought it would never work. For some, they thought the Lakers were going to be a serious title contender. According to the preseason odds, they had the second-best chance of winning the title. So they had every right to have high hopes. But there was one thing we could all agree on, none of us thought the Lakers would end up being a lottery team. And that’s what the Lakers ended up being. They are the most frustrating and disappointing Lakers team in franchise history.
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