The Los Angeles Lakers are 5.5 games of the final playoff spot; at what point should LeBron James decide to shut it down and call it a season?
Even though there weren’t many expectations heading into the season, it’s safe to say that the Los Angeles Lakers have been a disappointment in year one under LeBron James.
With that said, and as the Lakers sit 5.5 games back of the 8th and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, at what point should the team defer on the year and make the necessary moves to better their future?
With just 18 games left in the regular season, it would take a historical push in the last month of the season for the Lakers to break through. They would need to win somewhere close to 15 of those games, and hope that the Los Angeles Clippers or San Antonio Spurs absolutely fall apart in the last few weeks of the regular season.
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Short of that happening, the Lakers will likely miss the playoffs for the sixth straight season and so will LeBron for the first time since his sophomore season in the league.
If the Lakers resign to the fact that the playoffs are now out of reach, it might be time for Los Angeles to sit LeBron down for the remainder of the season. He missed more than a month with a hamstring injury during the month of January and if he’s not entirely healed from said injury it would make sense for him to take the remainder of the season off.
It would also likely help this team’s draft pick status. As it currently stands, the Lakers are only two games out of picking in the top 8 and three games out of picking in the top 7. Let’s remember, this team will be headed into the summer with hopes of landing a big-name star.
Earning a better draft pick in this year’s NBA Draft could go a long way in accomplishing that, perhaps attaching the pick to a couple of this team’s young core would be enough to make this team significantly better.
As odd as it may sound at this point in the season, especially with the characters involved, it might be time for LeBron and the Lakers to call it a season. It didn’t go as planned, but that’s OK. The real issue that this team needs to tackle moving forward is the roster. It simply isn’t good enough to compete in the Western Conference and that’s simply not acceptable for a LeBron-led team.