21-10, but reduced to an outsider in the Western Conference! I'm sorry, the Lakers' leader has quietly changed

This season's NBA regular season, unconsciously entered the closing stage, in the East, the Celtics absorbed Holiday and Boshen last offseason, and the regular season played a winning rate of nearly 8 percent, proud of the whole league, they can also unscrupulously release water, and play until the end of the season without help. The upside is that the core framework can stay in the playoffs, but the downside is that once it is loosened, it is not so easy to tighten it up. From the second-place Bucks, to the eighth-place Heat, they are divided into two battle groups, and the ranking combinations are ever-changing. On the West side, the Nuggets have lost suspense in locking the first place in the West, and the Timberwolves and Thunder have to fight for the second place until the last moment, from the Pelicans in sixth place to the Warriors in ninth place, there are also many combination possibilities, and after the Lakers fall to tenth, they can only resign themselves to fate!

To sum up the situation in the Western Conference play-offs. There are two games left in the game, the Pelicans are sixth, one win ahead of the Suns, and the remaining opponents are the Warriors and Lakers, the Suns are seventh, and the Kings + Warriors + Lakers are two wins ahead, and the remaining opponents are the Kings and Timberwolves, and the Kings have the same record as the Lakers and Warriors, but with the same record of the three, the Kings are 6-2, the Warriors are 5-3, the Lakers are 1-7, the Kings are eighth, and the remaining opponents are the Suns and Trail Blazers, the Warriors are ninth, and the remaining opponents are the Pelicans and Jazz, and the Lakers are tenth, and the remaining opponents are the Grizzlies and Pelicans. The Lakers want to enter the top eight, and there is only one possibility left: the Warriors lose to the Pelicans, the Suns win the Kings, and the Lakers can fight the Pelicans in the final game to be eighth. There are many possibilities for the Lakers to be tenth, as long as the Warriors beat the Pelicans and the Kings win the Suns, even if the Lakers win the Pelicans in the final game, they can only be tenth.

To put it simply, if the Lakers want to enter the top eight, they need the cooperation of the Warriors, Pelicans, Kings, and Suns, but that is equivalent to the Kings taking the initiative to fall out of the top eight, and the Pelicans give up the sixth direct ticket to the Suns. Since February, since the absence of the James, the Lakers have played the league's No. 1 Celtics under the leadership of Reaves with 32 points, the Lakers have won 21 of their last 31 games, but eventually became an outsider in the Western competition! In fact, the Lakers originally had the opportunity to take the initiative to control their own destiny, but after playing the Timberwolves, the thick eyebrows were injured, and the Lakers finally lost by 10 points, including after the thick eyebrows were absent from the Warriors, James led the team to a 14-point defeat, which has already doomed the end of the Lakers' season: double-elimination tournament, the upper limit of the eighth seed, but even if it enters, the Nuggets are still waiting there.

Let's take two small examples. Named Barkley and O'Neal discussed the reasons for the Lakers' struggles this season on a show, O'Neal believes that Davis' injury at a critical moment has hindered the Lakers' progress, but Barkley responded directly: Anthony Davis is not the reason why the Lakers are terrible. O'Neill: Who's that? Barkley: The rest of the people. Then the two of them looked at each other and smiled, but they didn't explain, because they also knew that there were some things that couldn't be explained. At the same time, columnist Pixar revealed that in the summer of '21, the Lakers did come close to getting DeRozan at one point, but in the end James pressed management to get Will. After Wei Shao came to the Lakers, the run-in failed to meet expectations, and James asked the Lakers management to send Wei Shao away. When Magic Johnson first said it, it also attracted a lot of James fans.

The Lakers not only lost Kuzma + Pope + two first-round picks, but also squandered the crucial two years. In fact, the Lakers' 56% win rate this season is really good, but the competition in the West is too cruel, so it must be that the Lakers are not good enough. To be precise, the Lakers can double kill the Bucks and play the Celtics in James' absence, as long as the thick eyebrows are there and the team's defense has a bottom limit, the Lakers' performance will not be too bad. But often in games where thick eyebrows are absent, James leads the team without a lower limit guarantee, such as helping the Spurs end the longest 18-game losing streak in team history this season, including losing to the Warriors, James' statistics look perfect, 33 points, 7 rebounds and 11 assists, but the Lakers let the Warriors shoot 26 three-pointers in one game, and this season the Lakers can make opponents shoot 22 open three-pointers per game, what's the problem?

Russell and Reaves, who have a defensive attitude but no defensive suppression, are themselves shortcomings of the Lakers. In the past 3 years, Lakers fans + media and even James himself have reached a tacit consensus that the Lakers are essentially still focusing on James as the core of tactical initiation at the expense of defensive energy in exchange for offensive data. This is a thing that puts the cart before the horse, because James is on the floor, take the initiative to have someone fill the hole for him on the defensive end, thick eyebrows are the most important member, and at the same time, thick eyebrows also have to take into account the aggressiveness of the offensive end, and it is not easy to have an attendance rate of more than 9% this season! Of course, in the high-end game and a win-win game, James can still be trusted, but can this turn the tables?

According to the data calculation given by the American media "BR", the probability that the Lakers will finally get the No. 8 seed is only 20.7%, and the probability of getting the No. 7 seed is only 3.7% (if you enter the top eight, you can get the No. 7 seed if you win). To put it bluntly, after the Lakers won the championship in 20 years, the Lakers' struggles in recent years are inevitably related to James's loss of dominance.