Lakers News: LA Is 1-5 Since In-Season Tournament Win
After falling 118-111 to the Minnesota Timberwolves last night in a valiant defeat sans LeBron James, your Los Angeles Lakers find themselves in perhaps their most perilous predicament of the young 2023-24 NBA season. The club has lost four consecutive bouts, and overall is 1-5 since winning the league's inaugural In-Season Tournament championship against the Indiana Pacers two weeks ago during a jet-setting adventure in Las Vegas.
29 games into the year, LA now sits just one contest over .500 at 15-14. After seemingly adding a lot of solid wing and frontcourt depth, and retaining all their own most important players, in free agency this summer, the 2023 Western Conference Finalists find themselves on shaky footing.
Even ahead of the Timberwolves loss, head coach Darvin Ham acknowledged his team's struggles since the IST victory, Dan Woike of The Los Angeles Times writes.
“By no means do we regret what we were able to do. It’s just something you got to figure out,” Ham noted. “It’s new. It created a sort of a whirlwind in terms of travel. But at the end of the day, no one’s gonna feel sorry for you, especially when you’re $500,000 richer.”
If not an outright regret, that quote reads like acknowledgement that the team may have expended more energy than expected to nab that fairly meaningless December trophy, the NBA Cup.
