Magic Johnson regrets a social media submit he sent to the web soon immediately after the Los Angeles Lakers were removed by the Denver Nuggets in the very first spherical of the NBA playoffs.
“Laker Country, I have to apologize to the Lakers firm,” Johnson posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday. “It was accidents that plagued the Lakers this year, not load management.”
The content material on Johnson’s social media accounts are recognised to be practically comically vanilla, but he set that apart Tuesday—the day soon after the Lakers’ year ended—and posted a pair of spicy can take.
Johnson blamed load management for the explanation Los Angeles finished with the Western Conference’s No. 7 seed and claimed the Nuggets were both of those mentally and physically tougher in their playoff collection.
The Lakers experienced numerous issues all through the 2023-24 NBA season, but load management in all probability was not a leading aspect in their struggles. Los Angeles’ most frequent starting five—LeBron James, Anthony Davis, D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves and Taurean Prince—all played at the very least 71 common-period games.
James dealt with calf and ankle concerns and skipped 11 video games. Function player Jarred Vanderbilt skipped the previous 3 months with a foot harm, and Rui Hachimura battled calf difficulties at times. But Davis played a occupation-significant 76 video games, as did Russell—his most since 2018-19—and Reaves played all 82 for the 1st time in his occupation.
If it wasn’t load management or damage troubles that brought on the staff to fall small of anticipations, the Lakers just merely were not excellent more than enough in 2023-24.
