Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

abeer3 · Jan 11, 2026 at 7:23 AM

https://www.silverscreenandroll.com...uka-doncic-lebron-james-kendrick-perkins-espn

since this was on page 2, i thought it was worth echoing the general sentiment of this piece, which is: if we were some other team, everyone would be talking about how we've been resilient and have overperformed instead of being terrible and embarrassing.

Right now, though, this is less about the playoff viability of the team and more about the general feeling of what type of season the Lakers have had so far and why it’s actually worth being happy over. I understand that negativity sells more than the alternative and the Lakers, like the Cowboys in the NFL or the Yankees in the MLB, have a historical cachet and global fanbase that encourages a diversity of takes that will, to put it kindly, animate those fans in a manner that makes them want to consume content.

I also understand that it’s hard to separate the Lakers brand from the championship chase, which leads folks to fall back to that framing when discussing the team.

That said, the Lakers currently have the sixth-best record in the NBA. This is the same team that many of these same prognosticators picked to be the seventh- or eighth-best team in their conference.

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.
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LTLakerFan · Jan 11, 2026 at 10:15 AM

FrontOfJersey22 · Jan 11, 2026 at 11:20 AM

Based on the amount of injuries to our “big three” it’s quite amazing that we aren’t 9th or 10th in the West.
We obviously need help on defense, but our offensive performances, mixed with winning nearly all of our close games have been mostly surprising.

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Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

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