It’s starting to feel like déjà vu in Los Angeles. Another game, another rollercoaster finish. The Lakers, who somehow turned a nine-point deficit into a 118-116 win over the Spurs on Wednesday, managed to make both their believers and doubters feel entirely justified. On paper, it’s a comeback win, a “character victory,” as coaches like to call it. But if you watched the game, you know it was something else: another episode in the Lakers’ maddening soap opera of brilliance mixed with self-inflicted chaos.
Luka Dončić (yes, the new Laker saviour in this imagined version of the NBA’s latest plot twist) played like a man who refuses to let talent go to waste. He took over when it mattered, hitting big shots, setting the table for his teammates, and steadying a team that often looks one bad possession away from collapse. But even Luka’s calm command couldn’t disguise what this game truly revealed: the Lakers are still searching for themselves.
This was supposed to be the night the Lakers flexed their depth, their supposed identity, their defensive bite. Instead, it became a microcosm of their season so far, good enough to win but rarely good enough to convince.
The Spurs, led by a cold-shooting but ever-disruptive Victor Wembanyama, controlled the tempo for much of the fourth quarter. They slowed the game down, spread the floor, and dared the Lakers to beat them with execution rather than energy. For a while, it worked. The Lakers looked out of rhythm, as though waiting for someone to take charge. The ball stuck. Rotations lagged. And then, suddenly, it clicked.
That’s the infuriating beauty of this team. In the span of a few minutes, the Lakers can morph from a disjointed, tired-looking squad into a well-oiled offensive storm. Dončić’s three-point step-backs, Anthony Davis’ defensive dominance, and Austin Reaves’ timely energy all converged in a furious run that erased San Antonio’s lead. But what should’ve been a definitive closing statement quickly turned into another late-game scramble.
Because that’s what the Lakers do, they make the simple complicated. Up five with under a minute to go, they nearly fumbled it away. A missed free throw here, a defensive lapse there, and suddenly the game was in jeopardy again. The final buzzer wasn’t relief as much as exhaustion. A win is a win, sure. But the Lakers are running out of moral victories disguised as triumphs.
The larger question looming over this team isn’t whether they can win games like this—it’s whether they can sustain anything resembling consistency. Every night seems to bring a new version of the Lakers. One game they’re locked in defensively, rotating like a championship-calibre unit. The next, they give up 30-point quarters as if allergic to communication. It’s not talent that’s missing; it’s cohesion.
And therein lies the concern.
For all of Dončić’s brilliance and he has been brilliant, the Lakers often look like they’re still figuring out whose team this really is. Anthony Davis is supposed to be the defensive anchor and the interior presence. LeBron, still hanging around the edges of this storyline like an aging general, sets the tone in flashes but no longer commands every minute. Dončić, though undeniably electric, sometimes seems to be trying to fit into an ecosystem that doesn’t know what it wants to be.
It’s an odd identity crisis for a team that, on paper, has everything: a superstar playmaker, a dominant big, a deep supporting cast, and a coaching staff that preaches defence. But the translation from paper to hardwood has always been where the Lakers lose the plot.
Their late-game habits, the casual turnovers, the lapses in focus—they’re symptoms of a deeper issue. This team still behaves like it’s reacting to the game rather than dictating it. That’s a fatal flaw for a contender. The best teams, Boston, Denver, even a surging Oklahoma City, know exactly who they are in every situation. The Lakers? They’re still flipping coins.
Yet, to their credit, they never stop fighting. Say what you want about the chaos, the inconsistency, the maddening rotations but this team doesn’t fold. Dončić has injected a certain stubbornness into the group. He doesn’t panic, even when the walls start closing in. His confidence is contagious. It’s what makes him special and what gives the Lakers hope that all of this, somehow, might eventually click.
There’s something almost poetic about the Lakers living on this knife’s edge. The drama is baked into their DNA. They don’t just play basketball; they perform it. Every game becomes a narrative of redemption and risk, of near-collapses and narrow escapes. It’s what makes them fascinating, even when they’re infuriating.
But fascination doesn’t win championships. Consistency does.
As they leave San Antonio with another escape act on their résumé, the Lakers should take little comfort in the scoreline. Because beneath the relief lies a reality they can’t outrun forever: they’re still not playing championship basketball. They’re surviving, not imposing.
Sooner or later, that distinction will matter. The Western Conference doesn’t forgive inconsistency. You can’t count on Dončić to bail you out every night. You can’t expect opponents to miss shots late. The best teams find ways to close, not just claw.
So yes, the Lakers won. Yes, they showed heart. But the questions remain louder than the celebration. How long can they rely on spurts of brilliance to paper over systemic flaws? How long can they keep flirting with disaster before it finally catches up?
Maybe this is who they are: a team built on tension, addicted to drama, forever one bad possession away from unravelling and one perfect play away from reminding everyone why they can’t be ignored.
The Lakers are both the problem and the solution, simultaneously spectacular and self-defeating. Watching them is like staring at a mirage: dazzling from a distance, distorted up close. And until they decide which version is real, nights like this one in San Antonio will keep playing on repeat, beautiful, maddening, and utterly, unmistakably Lakers.
No comments:
Post a Comment