The Los Angeles Lakers went all out to win the NBA's inaugural In-Season Tournament, but they haven't exactly maintained the momentum from their victory. The Lakers are now 1-3 since winning the In-Season Tournament, including an embarrassing loss to the Spurs that snapped San Antonio's 18-game losing streak. Several key players, including LeBron James and Anthony Davis, have missed games due to either injury or illness since the end of the tournament, and after the Lakers were defeated by the New York Knicks on Monday, James was asked about the difficulties the team has faced over the past week or so. While he acknowledged that their struggles came down to "a little bit of everything," he did make one pointed reference to the In-Season Tournament as a possible source of those recent woes.
"Have you seen Indiana's record since Vegas?" James quipped. Like the Lakers, the Pacers have won only once since the end of the In-Season Tournament (giving them a 1-4 record overall in the past eight days), and like the Lakers, they have an embarrassing loss to a lottery team (in their case, the Wizards) on their resume in the past week. Yet the presence of correlation does not necessarily indicate causation.
The Lakers and Pacers may have played a game that will ultimately be their 83rd on a traditional 82-game schedule, it's not as though they were particularly burdened by that game in the short term. During the week of the tournament final, the Lakers and Pacers each played three total games: a quarterfinal, which came on Monday for the Pacers and Tuesday for the Lakers, a semifinal on Thursday and then the championship bout on Saturday. All things considered, that's a relatively normal week for an NBA team. Neither team played a back-to-back in that window, and every other team played two games during that week, so while they may have gotten a bit more rest, the difference was hardly substantial.
One could argue that the hoopla of the tournament was draining in different ways, but that would be a stretch. Las Vegas is less than 300 miles from Los Angeles, so travel wouldn't have been a major issue. The Lakers won their semifinal in a blowout over the Pelicans, and nobody on the team played more than 31 minutes and 14 seconds. James played only 23 minutes against New Orleans, and then a relatively standard 35 against the Pacers. The Lakers then got two days off before returning to action against the Mavericks on Tuesday, Dec. 12.
It's also worth pointing out here that James and several of his Laker teammates openly spoke about wanting to win the tournament's $500,000 prize. They sought out the extra game. It just happened to come at a point in their season in which many of their players were somewhat vulnerable. James has been dealing with a calf issue lately. Davis has been playing through a hip injury. A non-COVID illness has made its way through the team. Stretches like this happen. Two of their three recent losses have been by five points or less. In another world, the Lakers are 3-1 since the tournament's end and this isn't a talking point.
Ironically, there was a point in recent history in which the Lakers did have a legitimate gripe on the scheduling front. When they won the 2020 championship in the Orlando bubble, they were given only a 71-day offseason before the 2020-21 season began. There were extenuating circumstances behind that quick turnaround, of course, but the Lakers dealt with significant injuries all season and ultimately failed to defend their title when they were knocked out in the first round. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Lakers were defeated by a Suns team whose 2020 season concluded nearly two full months before their own did. In 2021, the Lakers could justifiably feel burdened by the extra basketball they'd just played.
But there's an enormous difference between losing half of an offseason and losing a couple of extra days of regular-season rest. The Lakers are banged up right now. That was true before their trip to Vegas and it would still be true even if they hadn't played an extra game against the Pacers. At this point, there's nothing they can really do besides grit through the injuries and try to get healthy as quickly as possible.
