While not even the most pessimistic NBA fan predicted the Los Angeles Lakers to miss the play-in tournament, the team's issues were clear from day one. The roster wasn't a good fit together and the coaching staff was struggling to adapt on the go.
Fast-forward to today and the Lakers are not only the biggest disappointment in the league this season but also one of the biggest failures in basketball history. There's simply no way around it.
That's why Stephen A. Smith of ESPN didn't mince his words when talking about their situation. In one of his now-famous rants, the controversial pundit ripped the front office from top to bottom.
Stephen A. Smith Puts The Lakers On Blast, Calls Them 'An Atrocity'
(Transcript via ClutchPoints)
“The Lakers are a national basketball atrocity, let’s just call it what it is. They are an atrocity. And that starts from the top, down. It starts from Jeanie Buss allowing Linda Rambis to have power. It goes from there and disintegrates down to Rob Pelinka, who feels that as long as you’re wearing purple and gold and you’re a Laker, you’ll be just fine,” Smith ranted.
“It seeps further down to Frank Vogel, who lost the team because they stopped listening to him a long time ago. And in the middle of all of it is the culpability on the shoulders of LeBron James–not LeBron James the player because [he] has balled out [but it’s] LeBron James the GM. The reason I say that is because you could have Ty Lue as your coach but you cave in the management when they wanted to keep Jason Kidd … You settled for Frank Vogel, let Jason Kidd go to Dallas and now he’s a Coach of the Year candidate.”
While Smith is known for taking things up a notch for showmanship and viewership, he's 100% on point with this take. This all could've been avoided and it was clear from the outside that disaster was looming. Now, they'll need to find their way out of this mess.