The Los Angeles Lakers are on the verge of elimination with a future-defining offseason on the horizon.
Over the last seven playoff games that the Los Angeles Lakers have played the Denver Nuggets, they haven't looked that outmatched. In fact, the average margin of victory for the Nuggets in those games is just a little more than six points. However, the difference between the two is that the Nuggets seem to have the final championship piece and the Lakers don't.
LeBron James and Anthony Davis are two of the best players in the NBA. At this point in their respective NBA careers, that duo is not enough to win a championship in the modern NBA. The Nuggets, with Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon, and a strong supporting cast around them, are.
So as the Lakers fall into a 3-0 series deficit, with no team in NBA history having come back from such a series hole, this is a team that is naturally going to start looking toward the "what if" of the NBA offseason. I'm sure the Lakers are going to say all the right things over the next couple of days heading into Game 4, but this series is over and so is their season.
The Lakers aren't beating the defending champs four times in a row when they have lost seven straight playoff games to them.
What does the future hold for the Los Angeles Lakers?
But this isn't the time to clown the Lakers for running their roster back or for not making a move at the NBA Trade Deadline. That's grown old. What's done is done. The Lakers can't go back to correct a wrong and it makes little sense in being critical of that.
What Los Angeles can control is how they move forward heading into the offseason. And for the Lakers, they'll have a great opportunity heading into the summer. If they want to have any shot against the Nuggets, who seemingly control the West, in the future, they can't afford to strike out again.
The Lakers are quickly learning that they don't have enough to compete with the Nuggets. They need another All-Star talent, at the very least, to get back in the championship picture. If there's one thing the Lakers have learned throughout their failures at the hands of the Nuggets each of the last two seasons, it's that.
The Lakers likely are going to get swept by the Nuggets (once again) or lose in five games. But that's when the true test begins for the team; can they pull the unthinkable off in the offseason to reemerge as a championship contender?