Los Angeles Lakers: 5 takeaways from the 2017-18 NBA season

With the Los Angeles Lakers’ season coming to a end, these are five takeaways from their 2017-18 campaign.

The Los Angeles Lakers concluded their 2017-18 regular season on April 11 with a 115-100 win over the Los Angeles Clippers to bring their record to 35-47. This will be the fifth consecutive postseason that the Lakers will miss, their longest drought in franchise history, but there’s more optimism around this playoff absence than the previous four.

For starters, the Lakers outperformed their preseason win total applied to them by Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook. Although they finished just above said projection (over/under set at 33.5 wins), crossing that threshold and scoring above that projection line with how many young players lost significant court time is impressive.

Most of the noise before the season about the Lakers focused on the rookie season of Lonzo Ball and the 2018 free agency period during the summer with the team loaded with cap space and ambitions to sign one or two star-level players. But as the season wore on and Lonzo missed a good amount of games, the other Lakers stepped up and projected a bright future for the franchise.

Aside from an expected difficult time of losing in December, which can be attributed to injuries and a tough stretch of games, this was a smooth season of development for the Los Angeles Lakers, from the players to the coaching staff to the front office grabbing a first round pick for the second straight season.

Here are the five main takeaways from the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2017-18 regular season, beginning with their 2017 draft class.