Before the regular season began in October, the Los Angeles Lakers had the second-best odds to win the NBA Finals and become the first team in league history to capture 18 championships. But, the superstar trio of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook has been combustible, and their hope of reaching the playoffs is now officially squashed.
The Lakers' 121-110 road loss to the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday night eliminated them from Western Conference play-in contention, marking another low point in James' four-year stretch with the franchise. According to ESPN Stats, this is the first time that a James-led squad has been 16-plus games below the .500 mark. And with a pitiful overall record of 31-48, the 37-year-old will miss out on playoff action for just the second time since 2005. An all-around ugly season.
"I've had a great day, because this Lakers team is the biggest disaster in NBA regular season history," SiriusXM NBA Radio host Justin Termine explained to The Zach Gelb Show on Wednesday. "Any time that you can get one of these superteams -- which have hurt the sport since LeBron started forming them in 2010 -- to backfire, I'm in a good mood. Because it brings us back to the days when you had to build a team through smart decision-making, drafts, trades.
"And to see one of these teams fall flat on their face -- with a bunch of guys who left teams where they were fleeing adversity, trying to take an easy way out -- and then to embarrass themselves in historic fashion, I enjoy it. So my day's pretty good... With their Westbrook trade, I wasn't like, 'Oh, I hate that move, they're not going to make the postseason.' In fact, I thought they'd be the second seed in the Western Conference during the regular season..."
The entire NBA conversation between Termine and Gelb can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow The Zach Gelb Show on Twitter @ZachGelb and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.