All Ball: Happy Trails to the Lakers season

Mira Costa sophomore Jacob De Armas, a starter this year, will be among the Mustangs’ leaders next year. Photo by Ray Vidal

by Paul Teetor

It’s not official yet, but you can take it to the bank: the Lakers season is over.

Despite all the still-hopeful blather coming from their mainstream media minions, they probably are not even going to make the play-in tournament to get into the real playoffs.

Ok, Ok: It’s still early March and the playoffs don’t start till late April. Why so pessimistic? 

Because the Lakers fate was sealed Thursday afternoon when the team announced that LeBron James had suffered a “right foot tendon injury” late in the team’s miracle comeback from a 27-point deficit against the Dallas Mavericks five days earlier.

After the game LeBron said he heard “something pop” in his foot, but valiant warrior that he is, he kept playing and led his team to an inspiring win that all the media cheerleaders said was going to be the catalyst for a late-season Lakers surge into the playoffs.

But he had to miss the next couple of games, and by Thursday afternoon the Lakers had to admit that disaster had struck: LeBron is out for the near-term future.

His injury will be re-evaluated in three weeks, they said. 

That means he will miss at least the next 10 games. After that there are only nine games left in the regular season. Which means it’s entirely possible he will miss the rest of the season.

Indeed, it’s possible LeBron has played his last game in a purple and gold uniform.

Possible, but not likely. The Lakers brain trust has proven over and over again that it is not creative, innovative, or forward looking enough to do what it will take to get itself out of the corner the team has painted itself into: namely, to trade LeBron for a boat load of draft picks and start the long-overdue rebuilding process.

They almost surely will cling to LeBron to the bitter end because he is a proven box office attraction – indeed their only box office attraction. 

Without him there would be no reason for the Hollywood high-rollers to spend $3 grand on a courtside seat.

Without him to lead the way, alleged superstar Anthony Davis would be just another big guy putting up respectable numbers – 20 points and 10 rebounds a game – with no real impact on the final score.

Without LeBron, the only guys to play with any heart would be scrappers like Austin Reaves – a rare Lakers success story in that they signed the undrafted rookie last year and developed him into a legit NBA player in his second year – and Dennis Schroeder, the point guard who has blossomed now that team cancer Russell Westbrook has moved next door to the Clippers.

Not coincidentally, the Clippers are now 0-5 since Westbrook signed with them as a free agent and began his team-destroying, me-first act: taking and missing outside shots when the other team is begging him to take them, bull-rushing the basket in a desperate attempt to prove he still has the other-worldly athleticism he had when he was 24, not 34, and falling asleep on defense at just the wrong time late in the game.

For a fuller catalog of how and why Westbrook is destined to destroy his latest team, see last week’s All Ball column “Westbrook targets Clippers.”

While the Lakers were reluctantly breaking the bad injury news to the media and fans, LeBron did his part to keep up the “we still have a chance” façade by posting a video of himself inside a whirlpool with “Road to Recovery” written on it. 

So now the Lakers are faced with the worst possible situation: just a week after trading their precious 2027 first round draft pick that they vowed to keep unless a superstar like Kyrie Irving came back in return, they now have a team that is not going to make the playoffs.

And that was the whole point of the flurry of trades made at the trade deadline: to get LeBron some serious help and at least give him a shot at making the playoffs he and the team have missed two out of his four years in LA. Missing them again this year would make it three out of five years.

That’s a level of failure that was unthinkable when he signed with the Lakers back in the summer of 2018, and it’s still hard to believe in March of 2023. It was supposed to be one championship after another after another when LeBron forced the Lakers to trade away their best young players and all their draft picks up to 2027 to get AD.

And yet owner Jeanne Buss, General Manager Rob Pelinka and advisers Kurt and Linda Rambis refuse to even consider the only way to get off this treadmill of mediocrity that they are furiously running in place on.

The Lakers problems are much deeper than LeBron’s right foot tendon injury.

And they’re going to be a lot harder to fix than a right foot tendon injury.

RIP, Lakers season.

 

Mustang Boys go Down Fighting       

The best boys basketball team in Mira Costa history ended its season with a thud Thursday night, losing to Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks by a mis-leading score of 58-39 in the second round of the state playoffs.

The Mustangs actually led for most of the first half and were still behind by only one point late in the third quarter.

But then they lost their mojo and Notre Dame, which has three players headed for big-time Division 1 programs – Duke, Houston and Gonzaga – asserted its advantages in size and strength to pull away at the end.

“We just didn’t make enough plays at the end to win the game,” Coach Neal Perlmutter said.

Still, it was a great season by any measure. 

The Mustangs finished with a 28-4 record, won the Bay League, made the CIF semifinals and made it to the second round of the state playoffs.

The team was built around four seniors – deadeye sniper Dylan Black, gritty floor leader Will Householter, post monster Trey Pearce and jack-of-all-trades Nick Lundy – who will be sorely missed next season.

But the Mira Costa pipeline is ready with experienced replacements.

Super sophomore Jacob De Armas was the Mustang’s most explosive player all year at 6-foot-4, and fellow sophomore Preston Ezewiro is a 6-foot-7 leaper who became a complete basketball player this year while being the fifth starter alongside the four seniors.

Junior forward James Reach is a smooth operator who had his moments in the spotlight this year, and sophomore forward Eneasi Piuleini showed great poise and potential every time he got into a game.

Finally, there is talented sophomore point guard Christian Kranz, who had the unfortunate job of backing up Householter and Black, who were named co-MVPs of the Bay League and played most if not all of every game. It had to be frustrating for Kranz to sit on the bench knowing what he could contribute, but Kranz showed a great handle and a real talent for playmaking when he did get a chance to play and projects as the starting point guard next season.

In addition, the Costa JV went 27-1 and has several players who project as rotation players on the varsity next season, including Max Jacobs, Mac Bedner and Bryson Bryker.

The future is bright for the Mustangs.

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor 

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