Moritz “Puttin’ on the ‘Ritz” Wagner and Johnathan Williams tonight: 40 points, 16 rebounds combined. JaVale McGee and Tyson Chandler tonight: 8 points, 5 rebounds combined. Mike Muscala tonight: 0 points, 0 rebounds. Ivica Zubac tonight: thanking god that he got the heck out of a Lakers situation where he obviously wasn’t wanted. I’m not trying to imply anything here, just stating facts.
A whole book could be written about how messed up this whole Lakers season has been. Maybe even two books, with copious appendices. I’m thinking about it, and I can’t think of many things that have gone right for them this year. Some of the stuff, injuries and what have you, are not the FO’s fault. Most of it is. Somehow, they wasted a whole year of LeBron’s, well, maybe not “prime”, but one of his remaining years farting around with a whole bunch of cruddy malcontent vets instead of trying to play and develop the players that actually have a future with the team. The end result would’ve been the same, no playoffs, but acquired in a much better way.
Wagner is finally getting to play recently after being rudely affixed to the bench with a staple gun for most of the season. There are arguments to be made that giving him too many minutes too early would’ve been bad for his development, because he plainly wasn’t ready for the real NBA, but those arguments ring hollow when we see what this season turned out to be.
I am still waiting for Isaac Bonga to get his chances, by the way.
It’s just a shame that Wagner had to have his career night on national TV where the commentators clearly could give less than 0.5 of a crap. I think we got one update on how many points he had while the game was going on, with the fact that this was the game of his life being totally ignored. Gotta talk about whether the Lakers should trade LeBron or not, I guess. I may stoop low sometimes, but never that low.