The Los Angeles Lakers come into this season with the weight of expectation and the confidence of champions. Last year they rolled through the playoffs field in the NBA Bubble, their two top-5 players an unstoppable force. Overall they went 16-5 and looked inevitable.
Then the season occurred, and injuries to those two stars pushed the Lakers down the bracket and injected uncertainty. Yet even as the postseason began things didn’t look as formidable. Their two stars were healthy enough to play, they faced one of the playoff field’s most inexperienced teams, and they were on the opposite side of the bracket from their toughest on-paper opponents.
Three games in things were trending in the right direction. Although LeBron James dropped his classic Game 1 loss, the Lakers had won the next two and Anthony Davis looked dominant. Chris Paul, the Suns’ veteran point guard was hurt and ineffective. The Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers were beating each other up for the right to lose to the defending champs.
It all fell apart from there. Anthony Davis would suffer a groin injury late in the first half of Game 4, while opposite them Chris Paul would gut through his shoulder injury to lead the Suns to the win. Then Game 5 was an absolute blowout for the Suns to take the series lead. Game 6, back in Los Angeles, was a win-or-go-home situation for the Lakers. Unable to rise to the occasion, they lost again in ignominious fashion to end their season.
Why did the Los Angeles Lakers lose in the first round eight months after winning the title?
There is a glaring and obvious cause to the Lakers’ quick exit, the groin injury to Anthony Davis, and we will unpack the effect that injury had. Yet it was not the sole reason the Lakers lost, especially when you consider how badly the Suns rolled over them the final three games of the series. There is more to point to in diagnosing this flameout than just one player.
A couple of months ago we looked at both sides of the championship coin for the Lakers. If they won the title again, what would the reasons be? If they lost, however, what would be holding them back? The three reasons we said the Lakers would not win the title: injuries to their stars, struggles guarding opposing backcourts, and a much tougher bracket than a year ago. That looks very prescient now.
Building into that list a little more nuance now that we know exactly what happened, we can similarly build out the three reasons the Lakers lost in the first round. We’ll start with the most important and most obvious: those injured stars.