Season Grades: LA Lakers

F

Championship or bust. This season = BUST. Super BUST. Swept BUST. Bush league, decking dinky guards, taking off jersey, BUST.

With dreams of three-peats dancing in Laker-Land, the purple and gold took a giant dump all season long. The Lakers getting blown out against teams such as the Grizzlies, and the Heat, folks in LA started to panic, but don't worry Derek Fisher, and Kobe have your back.

Don't worry... I got yo back

Remember all those interviews through out the year, where the Lakers were quoted saying they know when to "hit the switch"? It's a long season. Champions know when its time to take over and 'hit the switch'. And they seemed to do so against the Pacers when they won 122-99 (that was sarcasm).

The Lakers lied all season long, then were exposed during the post season. Pau Gasol became a softy once again, and wrongly blamed for all the Laker problems. The Bench disappeared and Bynum became a punk....and trade bait some how...

The Lakers gave us another terrible Christmas Day game, swore they would turn it on when it counted, blamed the guy who brought them two championships, and now swear they'll get Dwight Howard, when in reality they need a guard who won't get beat off the dribble every time.

Its easy to be disappointed when you're accustomed to winning championships, and you fail. But it was the way the Lakers failed this year that gave them their F. Empty promises, excuses, punk/cheap plays, getting swept out of the playoffs in the most embarrassing game the Lakers have played since game 7 against the Suns in 2007.

LOCK OUT

Why did it take this long to write about the lockout?
Because I wanted to write this the same day as Kevin James' movie ZOOKEEPER comes out.

I'm sorry

Can you believe this?!
Countless commercials and advertisements through the NBA have a culminated into this moment of long awaited moment of mediocrity.

When I saw that ZOOKEEPER was coming out this Friday I initially thought it was coming out on DVD. Didn't they advertise this while the Lakers were being swept? How many times can a talking gorilla be funny? Anyway the lockout...

GOOD!!

I love basketball, I do. But lets face the fact, Basketball is a distant third place behind MLB. There are a lot of places throughout the country that would rather watch college football then watch the NBA. There are a lot of reasons why the NBA sucks, and money is part of it.

Every league has high paid athletes, but the NBA is known for having TERRIBLE contracts (Arenas, Redd, Walton, Baron Davis, The-guy-traded-from-Orlando-to-Charlotte-whose-name-i-forgot-cause-hes-terrible). Bad management and contracts aside, no one wants to watch prima donnas making ridiculous amounts of money play a lackluster regular season basketball, complain with the refs more then any other sport (tie with soccer), flop on the floor (slightly behind soccer). I will bring up the Christmas day game with the Heat and Lakers... again.

The most watched regular season game that no one should care about, because the players don't care. Phil and Kobe telling the media, "Playing on Christmas sucks." IT SUCKS FOR THE FANS, BECAUSE ATHLETES DON'T CARE. Think they care? Didn't seem like it when the Lakers were blown out by the 3rd. Why should they? Would you? Would you care if you were making 8 million a year to ride the bench the entire game? Would you care if you made 20 mil a year? Once the game is out of reach, I would probably start dreaming of my yacht and beach front home. But I'm getting slightly off topic.

Of course, who are the real losers? Us, me, you, yo mama.
I admit, I am a growing MLB fan, a big part of the reason why, is because I can afford going to multiple games in a season. Tickets to watch boring regular season (besides watching Grififn and the HEAT) are silly. Why should a consumer pay $50 for border-line bad seats, to feed bad contracts, for athletes who don't seem to care.

Hey dude, $50 isn't that bad...get a job.

Its not bad for one person, but what if you want to take your family to the game, that's $200 just on tickets, what about those $5 sodas and $10 burgers and pizzas. Gas to the game... You're spending over $300.

This is a lesson in humility. The NBA was becoming out of control. People who were making millions shouldn't be. Other professionals in this world who SHOULD be making more money (Doctors, humanitarians, teachers) are not.

Hey man, its capitalism, its supply and demand. People pay for it, why shouldn't they make the money?

Well, its caught up to them, and now 22 teams in the league are losing money each year. Millions lost. Fat fucking Cat owners losing money. Fucking GOOD.