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During the era of the "Showtime" Los Angeles Lakers teams of the late '70's to early '90's, the big marquee name team players were Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar "Big Game James" Worthy, Byron Scott and Michael Cooper just to name a few.From 1996 to 2004 there was the dynasty era of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. After that Shaquille O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat and the Lakers were essentially Kobe Bryant's team then for a few more years until 2016 when Bryant officially retired as a player.
Over the last couple of years since Kobe's retirement there have not been too many good or great individual players or teams that have led to the one thing that the entire franchise and its fans want at the end of the season which is an appearance in the NBA Finals round of the NBA Playoffs and a subsequent NBA Championship. The light at the end of the championship tunnel may be near in 2018 however with the arrival via free agency from the Cleveland Cavaliers of arguably the best basketball player in the NBA currently in LeBron James!
Sometime over the course of the next few years, LeBron James and company can hopefully bring the Lakers back to their glory days that the fans of the team have become so familiar with throughout their time in the city of Los Angeles. I know that I'm definitely very excited and am looking forward to seeing how the whole team will perform during this upcoming season as well as for years to come.
Over the last few years I have not watched too many Lakers games myself for a couple of reasons. The first is that out of all of the TV sports channels that my family and I do get at our house, Spectrum Sportsnet is not one of them. The other reason is that the team itself has not been doing very good over the last couple years for me to want to watch them and therefore become very interested in seeing how well they may or may not have been doing during the season. Now that LeBron James is about to start his first season as a player for the Lakers, I think there is a very good chance that I will want to watch them play on national game broadcasts such as those on ESPN/ABC, TNT and NBA TV at least.
Another interesting aspect of Lebron James choosing to join the Lakers over the summer was seeing all the billboards that were put up around the city of Los Angeles and the suburbs as part of a recruiting campaign by local attorney and Lakers fan Jacob Emrani. Unfortunately the Lakers did not end up winning the Paul George sweepstakes to go along with the addition of LeBron but I guess getting 1 out of 2 of the biggest players that were available during this past offseason is not bad, especially if the one player they did get just so happens to be the best player in the sport right now.
While it is still to be determined how well the Los Angeles Lakers will do during the upcoming NBA season, it has certainly been very interesting and exciting to see how the whole free agency period in 2018 has played out up to this point. Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Rob Pelinka and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers front office team also deserve some credit for their efforts in trying to put together what looks like the start of a good team on paper after a few down years performance wise.
Hopefully with more moves like this being made over the next few years, the Lakers can get back to the promise land of the playoffs and the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010. Until then I will wait very patiently to see how things unfold as the team will no doubt try its best to bring the Larry O'Brien trophy back to the city of Los Angeles and its fans for a 17th time in franchise history! For now I'll just say welcome to Los Angeles LeBron!
Tim Musick.
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