The Lakers still have games ahead of them in their season, and the post-mortem articles about them are in full force. Thousands and thousands of words have been written, podcasted and broadcast about who is most responsible for the most disappointing season in NBA history, but few have been spent on who can sit back with a guilt-free conscience.
So Harrison Faigen and I may have devoted a little too much time to this Lakers season’s heroes this week in the “Lakers Lounge,” but as we’re pretty sure it’s a conversation you’ve never heard before, it was well wasted time .
In this exercise, Harrison and I took turns drafting players or people associated with the Lakers (whom you probably know) to see who would run out of names first.
Aside from the obvious guys who have barely played with two-way contracts – and we cover them too – there are a few names that stand out.
Austin Reaves and Malik Monk are two legitimate bright spots from a season that seemingly took place in a black hole. Both had minimal contracts and basically no expectations. They proved they belonged in a good team’s rotation, even as returns diminished, as the role they were asked to take on was beyond what they were capable of.
Midseason additions like DJ Augustin, Stanley Johnson and Wenyen Gabriel gave us a glimpse of what the Lakers could have been if they had focused on the skills the team actually needed. The scouting department once again found gold in undrafted free agency or the G League, overcoming their severely restricted bites on the apple in the first round.
Heck, even Rajon Rondo deserves credit for recognizing a losing situation and getting out of it as quickly as possible.
Harrison and I have discussed all of this, as well as the latest of my tweets that need explanation and how washing the dishes has cost Harrison quite a bit of blood, but not this evening’s game recap.
You can listen to the full episode below, and to make sure you don’t miss a show, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed iTunes, Spotify, stapler or Google Podcasts.
And for a quick recap pod, check out lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and prepares you for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast Feed.