Lakers Part Of Unwanted Recent History After Warriors Loss

The Lakers are on the wrong side of this stat.

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

For a franchise so storied and successful, the Los Angeles Lakers have found themselves on the wrong side of a long-term stat relating to team success:

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This is as surprising as it gets, considering LA has also won six championships in the 17-year span that ESPN is discussing.

Every year that LA has won a title, they've exceeded the 50-win mark, but outside of those winning years (and 2004/2008, where they lost in the Finals), they've been under that mark.

This reflects some general instability within the franchise. While it's incredibly challenging to eclipse the 50-win mark and win as many titles as they have since 2000, it's also true that expectations are far higher than that of other teams when a franchise possess generational talents like Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis in such a short timespan.

In fact, the team has won over 50 games just once since 2011, which happened during their title campaign in 2020. Perhaps they would have been candidates in 2021 if the season wasn't shortened, but they won 42 of 72 games, meaning they weren't on pace.

Referring back to the notion of instability, the franchise has been stable overall as it pertains to the inflow of talent, but a number of factors have caused "lost seasons" throughout the millennium. For example, the team lost multiple years after Shaquille O'Neal's unceremonious departure, as well as a number of years during their rebuild at the end of Kobe's career, and after it.

Even after the arrival of LeBron James, the team has eclipsed 50 wins just once, as a combination of injuries and roster mismanagement, have curbed the team's record, causing them to finish below their anticipated record during the 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and now, the 2023-2024 seasons.

LA feels very boom-or-bust as an organization now given changes in leadership, coaching, management, and their ever-so-pertinent roster turnover, so one can only hope that there's some stability soon when it comes to those factors in the coming years, resembling that of LA in the early – and late 2000s.