When the season started up, making the playoffs was a coin flip. As the season wound down, finishing last place in the Western Conference was a 50-50 proposition.
Well, the Los Angeles Lakers did not make the playoffs, and they were not the absolute bottom team in the West, but the 2013-14 season will go down as the worst year in the history of the franchise since the Minneapolis Lakers relocated to sunny Southern California and became the Los Angeles Lakers.
To discipline this team for the punishment it inflicted upon its fans for the better part of six months, the season finale will be held in San Antonio on Wednesday. The San Antonio Spurs are the best team in basketball and are the only team with more than 60 wins this season. They have more wins than the Lakers have losses, so the Spurs are better at winning than the Lakers are at losing.
That’s impressive.
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On Wednesday, the Lakers will finish with the sixth-worst record in the NBA—unless the Boston Celtics beat the Washington Wizards and the Lakers beat the Spurs. If the Celtics win and the Lakers lose—wishing for this to happen should make every “team tank” member question what he has become—the Lakers would finish tied for the fifth-worst record in the NBA.
In summary, the Lakers were terrible this season.
An unbelievable string of injures made them the worst Lakers team Angelinos ever experienced, but this assembly of Lakers never expected to win the title this season. Even if Kobe Bryant didn’t break his knee, this team never expected to win the division, make a deep playoff run or celebrate a victory parade.
The Lakers were due to lose this season, but injuries allowed them to overachieve and lose at a rate that often had fans celebrating losses. The painful whimpers of all those beatings may ultimately translate to the joyous screams of victory come draft day.
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Before draft day or lottery day, though, the 2013-14 Los Angeles Lakers play their final game of an historically bad season on Wednesday night at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Yes, on Wednesday, it finally ends.
