Lakers News: Los Angeles Enjoying Historic In-Season Revival
Your Los Angeles Lakers are making history as they continue to progress deeper into these playoffs.
Sam Quinn of CBS Sports writes that the Lakers have completed a pretty remarkable in-season revival. Quinn notes that, having advanced to the Western Conference Finals, LA is now the first club in the history of North American sports to finish last in their division (the Pacific, where LA was behind the Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors) and still make their playoffs' final four.
Only one other club has reached a Conference Finals round after beginning their regular season with a dismal 2-10 start, the 1977-78 Seattle Supersonics. That team would go on to make the NBA Finals, losing an epic seven-game series against Wes Unseld and the Washington Bullets.
With their win on Friday, they became the first team in North American professional sports history to finish in last place in their division and still be among the final four teams remaining in the playoffs, according to OPTAStats. They were the first team in 18 years to start a season 2-10 and still finish above .500 for the season, and they are just the second team in NBA history to reach the conference finals after starting 2-10, following the 1977-78 Seattle Supersonics.
To be fair, this is a radically revitalized LA club. Gone are the exorbitant contracts and awful fits of Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, and Kendrick Nunn (plus Thomas Bryant, who was fine in LA but has been excised from the Denver Nuggets' playoff rotation at this juncture), replaced with guys who really make sense around stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis: D'Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Rui Hachimura are the new additions in the team's playoff rotation, though Malik Beasley and Mo Bamba (the Lakers hold team options for both) also showed flashes in the regular season.
Los Angeles isn't necessarily satisfied with making the third round of the playoffs after such a brutal start to its season, however. LeBron James and Anthony Davis are hungry for more championship hardware.
"We're trying to win every hand," All-NBA small forward LeBron James said after the team wrapped up the Golden State Warriors' season on Friday.
Head coach Darvin Ham, however, is taking a bit more of a stop-and-smell-the-flowers approach to this latest achievement.
"We already know that monster in the Rocky Mountains is waiting on us, but can we just enjoy this one first?" head coach Darvin Ham jokingly asked gathered media during his own postgame presser Friday.
At 43-39 and facing a 53-29 Denver team that has yet to drop a game at home these entire playoffs, there's no question the Lakers are going to be underdogs in this series. Then again, they've been underdogs in every single round of the playoffs thus far. That's worked out pretty well for them.
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