While the Lakers’ season is not officially over, their disastrous 2022 run reached another milestone Tuesday night, when the team was eliminated from any postseason contention after a loss to the Suns. Los Angeles is now not even eligible for the play-in tournament, cementing what has been one of the most hilarious and frankly unsurprisingly awful seasons in recent NBA history. Two years ago, this team won the NBA Finals. Now, it's headed for the lottery…except that lottery pick is headed to the Pelicans, who will finish multiple games ahead of the Lakers in the West. With Los Angeles’s importance to the current state of affairs in the league at essentially zero, it’s only fair to look ahead to the offseason. Here are four big questions the Lakers will face this summer.
Will Anybody Trade for Russell Westbrook?
The Westbrook trade is not the only reason the Lakers were a trainwreck this season, but it was basically the first domino for all the mistakes that followed. The Westbrook trade not only moved the Lakers away from what was likely a better move (acquiring Buddy Hield), it robbed the team of its depth and forced the front office to fill out the roster with largely minimum players. And aside from Malik Monk, most of those players did not exactly contribute to winning. Kendrick Nunn, Trevor Ariza, Carmelo Anthony and Kent Bazemore are not quite the hallmarks of a championship contender.
