LA Lakers Running on Fumes, Approaching Historic Level of Futility

LOS ANGELES — Not just another loss.

Not just what Jodie Meeks called “getting embarrassed” and Pau Gasol called “difficult to suffer.”

For the Los Angeles Lakers, this 36-point defeat Friday night to the Los Angeles Clippers was actually inevitable.

The Lakers have been trending in this direction for some time, and as much as the easy way out is to blame the coach that isn’t Phil Jackson, there was no reasonable way to expect Mike D’Antoni to stop the slide.

The Lakers don’t have any great players, and they don’t have enough good ones either.



That’s the primary reason they’ve lost 10 of 11 games for the first time since 2005, which was Kobe Bryant’s first Shaquille O’Neal-less team and actually much better than you might recall, considering it’s the only Lakers team to miss the playoffs in the past 19 years.

The 2004-05 Lakers were 32-29 before skidding down the stretch with injuries also playing a big part: Lamar Odom missed the final 17 games with a torn shoulder labrum, and the role players, forced to overextend themselves in January and February during the month Bryant missed with a severe ankle sprain, fell to pieces late in the season.

For all the jokes now about Smush Parker and Kwame Brown, who joined the team after that lottery season, Parker and Brown certainly never lost 10 of 11 as Lakers. (They also had Bryant in his prime playing 157 of 164 games and Jackson coaching them to playoff berths both years.)



The 2004-05 Lakers' point guard was Chucky Atkins, and their center was Chris Mihm. Not quite as comical to recall, but not nearly good enough. It’s entirely possible that we’ll look back at these days and struggle to remember the starting point guard’s name at all (Kendall Marshall) or ever see the starting center (Robert Sacre...

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