They Want You To Panic. Don’t Let Them.
Let’s get one thing straight. The people who write the articles, the talking heads on TV, the so-called “experts” with their calculators and their spreadsheets—they don’t want the Los Angeles Lakers to succeed. They are desperately searching for a crack in the armor, a flaw they can magnify into a fatal wound, and right now, they’ve all decided to swarm around this three-point shooting slump like vultures over a carcass. They write headlines filled with feigned confusion, like The Athletic asking, “How do the Lakers keep winning when they’re missing so many shots?” as if it’s some cosmic mystery that can’t be solved by their precious algorithms. They point to numbers and percentages as definitive proof of impending doom, ignoring the one stat that actually matters: the final score.
It’s a lie. A complete and total fabrication designed to sow doubt among the faithful and give hope to the haters. They are trying to sell you a narrative of a flawed, broken team that’s getting by on luck. But we know better, don’t we? We, the fans who actually watch the games instead of just reading box scores, see what’s really happening. We see a team being forged in the fires of adversity, a team learning to win ugly, a team building an identity based not on the fickle flight of a basketball from 23 feet away, but on something far more powerful and enduring. They are building their foundation on grit.
The Gospel According to King James
When the noise gets loudest, you listen to the leader. And what does the leader, LeBron James, have to say about this supposed crisis? He says the trend “won’t last.” That’s it. No panic, no long-winded explanations, no excuses. Just the calm, unwavering confidence of a man who has seen it all and knows that the law of averages is as real as gravity. Shooters shoot. And eventually, shooters make. The media elites, in their rush to pronounce the Lakers’ offense dead on arrival, conveniently ignore this fundamental truth of the sport. They treat a cold streak as a permanent condition because it fits their predetermined narrative.
Why do they do this? Because a dominant Lakers team led by a transcendent LeBron James is bad for their business model, which thrives on parity and controversy. They need a vulnerable king to generate clicks and ratings. So they create the vulnerability themselves. They take a temporary slump and frame it as a systemic failure. But LeBron isn’t playing their game. He’s seen this movie before. He knows that championships aren’t won in November with hot shooting. They are won in June with defense, chemistry, and an unbreakable will to win. The very qualities this team is developing right now while their shots aren’t falling. Are you starting to see the picture? The supposed weakness is actually their greatest strength in disguise.
Austin Reaves: The Man They Can’t Measure
And then there’s Austin Reaves. He is the living, breathing refutation of the entire analytics-driven worldview that has poisoned modern sports analysis. This is a kid who wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t a lottery pick. He didn’t have the measurables that make the spreadsheet jockeys drool. He was just a basketball player. A tough, smart, relentless competitor who fought his way from an undrafted afterthought to a cornerstone of the most famous franchise in sports. He is everything the bean counters can’t quantify. He is the soul of this team.
When they point to Reaves’ shooting percentages during a slump, they miss the entire point of his existence on this roster. They don’t see the timely cut, the extra pass, the defensive rotation that won’t show up on a standard stat sheet but absolutely wins basketball games. They don’t understand that his value isn’t in his three-point percentage on a Tuesday night in Utah; it’s in his fearlessness, his basketball IQ, and his embodiment of the ‘next man up’ mentality that defines tough teams. Reaves is proof that the human element—heart, hustle, intelligence—will always triumph over cold, lifeless numbers. The media’s obsession with his shooting slump is a desperate attempt to reduce him to a variable in their equation, to strip him of the very qualities that make him special. They can’t stand that a guy like him is thriving, because his success proves their entire system is a fraud.
The Tyranny of the Three-Point Shot
This whole manufactured panic is a symptom of a larger disease: the NBA’s slavish devotion to the three-point shot. The analytics revolution, which was supposed to bring enlightenment, has instead brought a plague of homogeneity. It has convinced a generation of executives and coaches that the only path to victory is to launch 40 threes a game and hope for the best. It’s a sterile, soulless brand of basketball that devalues defense, mid-range artistry, and post play. It’s checkers, not chess.
The Lakers are winning by rebelling against this tyranny. Yes, they want to make their threes. Of course they do. But their identity isn’t defined by it. Their identity is being forged in the paint, on the defensive end, and in the clutch moments where execution trumps mathematics. They are proving you can win in the modern NBA without selling your soul to the analytics gods. You can win with size, with defense, with veteran savvy, and with superstars who know how to impose their will on a game. Is it any wonder the system’s high priests are so desperate to discredit them? The Lakers’ success is an existential threat to their entire religion.
What happens when the shots start falling? What happens when the math catches up to the talent? Every game the Lakers win right now, every ugly, grinding victory they pull out while shooting 25% from deep, is a deposit in the bank of mental toughness. They are learning how to survive in the worst of conditions. So what do you think will happen when the sun comes out? When D’Angelo Russell’s shots are pure, when Austin Reaves finds his rhythm, when LeBron is hitting from all over the court? The league should be terrified. This team that is already winning is just the beta test. The final version, fully armed and operational with a functional offense, will be a juggernaut. The media isn’t telling you that, are they? No. They’re too busy staring at their spreadsheets, completely missing the storm that’s gathering right in front of them.
So let them keep talking. Let them keep writing their articles and crunching their numbers. Let them obsess over a temporary slump while we obsess over what truly matters: winning. This isn’t a story about a shooting problem. This is a story about a team discovering its identity, led by a king who refuses to bow to the false idols of the modern game, and populated by fighters who the system overlooked. This is our team. And the rest of the league, along with their cheerleaders in the media, are about to find out what happens when you mistake a sleeping giant for a dying one.
