Lakers' early elimination may be embarrassing, but it's what this organization needed after miserable year

The Lakers were better off missing the playoffs

If the Los Angeles Lakers made anything clear at the 2022 trade deadline, it was this: they don't want to do what it will take to fix this. This disaster of a season, the two-year-long effort to tear down a champion, this decade of nepotistic hires and the terrible basketball it has largely produced. None of these are problems that Lakers management seemed all that interested in addressing. They were problems that the Lakers hoped would fix themselves.

ESPN's Ramona Shelburne said it best in February when she argued that her interpretation of the team's inaction "was that the Lakers organization, from ownership on down, basically decided: 'You guys got yourself into this. This is the bed you have made. LeBron [James], Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, all the future Hall of Famers, this is your choice of roster and team, go make it work.'"

Well, they didn't make it work. On Tuesday, the Phoenix Suns ended the Lakers' season for the second year in a row. This time, they didn't even wait until the postseason. They knocked the Lakers out of the running for a meager play-in position with almost a week left in the regular season. The Lakers, preseason favorites in the Western Conference, can finish no better than 11th in the final standings.