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The Lakers are never going to get a fair shake when it comes to national media coverage.
This isn’t a new revelation. In fact, the very topic of this article has already been written about by our own Darius Soriano just two months ago.
And while there’s lots of season left to play and things could always change, right now, the Lakers are actually a good story! They’ve been hammered by injuries and all they’ve done is win nearly two-thirds of their games through almost half the season.
No one’s asking to anoint them the favorites to win the title or anything like that. But if we could maybe just start treating them as though they’re a good team that is actually finding ways to win games they probably shouldn’t and position themselves well to actually make the run no one thinks they will, that would be okay too?
Or maybe we put another blowhard on TV saying how they should trade LeBron or Austin Reaves for role players? Yeah, let’s do that instead.
Not surprisingly, the media hasn’t changed its tune on the Lakers since that article was posted.
The only change in the last two months is that head coach JJ Redick has also taken notice. After wins on either side of the team’s weekend back-to-back, Redick spoke about the resiliency of his side and took a subtle jab at the overreactions at various moments this season.
“Again, the world has fallen for us 19 times and it’s just part of the nature of this cycle,” Redick said. “Our guys have bounced back and responded well throughout the season. Tied in the loss column for fifth and a couple of games out of third with a number of these teams coming up that are right there with us. So, we’re going to keep plugging away.”
Certainly, there are times when strong reactions are warranted. There should be criticism when the team loses three straight games as they did last week. When they were trending in the wrong direction in late December and into January, criticism was warranted.
However, the issue is that the noise isn’t nearly as loud for other teams. Frankly, after the Thunder and Spurs, the next tier of teams in the Western Conference — which includes the Lakers — is remarkably mid. Houston, Minnesota, Denver and LA are separated by 1.5 games.
While the Lakers have gone 5-5 in the last 10 games, Denver has gone 4-6. The Warriors team the Lakers blew out in Golden State on Saturday? That starting lineup without Draymond Green beat the Nuggets one week ago. Houston had a monumental collapse in the fourth quarter against the Knicks a week ago, to say nothing of Kevin Durant’s burner accounts and how that mess has just quietly gone away.
Could you imagine if it came out that LeBron was creating accounts and trashing teammates to random people on Twitter? It wouldn’t have just gone away inside of two weeks!
Frustratingly, things are just louder when it comes to the Lakers. Again, that’s not new and that won’t change. But it’s nice to see the head coach calling that out as well.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.