Lakers helped make NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament one to remember

Hey everyone, it’s Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times. Welcome to the latest edition of the Lakers newsletter, the one place where fans of the NBA’s greatest in-season tournament team ever can gather to shrug at the carefully curated indie Christmas song I picked for the end of the email.

This week, for the last time, I want to talk about the tournament, the good, the bad and the why did that guy refuse to hit on 15 against a dealer’s face card.

It wasn’t a jackpot, but it wasn’t a bust

My bias on the in-season tournament exists because of the road the Lakers walked — one that began with a highly competitive game in Phoenix, where LeBron James and Kevin Durant got to play medium-stakes basketball again.

From there, the Lakers played home games that ended in total blowouts, but with the team cooking, the atmosphere was great. Same in Portland.

The knockout round game with the Suns felt like the postseason, and from there, the team was off to Vegas where the games 100% felt different in every aspect — from playing in a doubleheader on Thursday to the somewhat contrived importance of the finals — the beer and champagne room barely got used postgame.

In the end, the event accomplished almost everything it set out to do. Players showed up and pushed the competition levels northward, viewers tuned in, the NBA’s biggest star, James, embraced the format and in the end, the event will be immortalized in the Lakers’ rafters.

A quick note on this: The Lakers and the NBA knew there was a needle that needed to be threaded once it became clear the Lakers had a real shot of winning. Of course the league wanted to see the win celebrated in a big way. And, of course, the Lakers organization was sensitive to putting it on the same pedestal of its NBA championships. The end decision, a separate banner exclusively for NBA Cups, seems like the ideal compromise. For the purists — the whole idea of these things is to trigger memories for fans in the building, and looking up and being reminded of what James and the Lakers did in this first in-season tournament is undoubtedly a moment worth at least a glancing, “Remember that?’”

Was it perfect? Of course not. There was real anxiety about the environment in Las Vegas — and there will be again if the Lakers aren’t headlining. Despite the efforts to offer a product around the NFL schedule, the league still went up against the NFL on Thursday and the Heisman Trophy ceremony on Saturday.

The biggest issue is unavoidable — by adding weight to a handful of early-season games, you’re reminding everyone of the slog of the other regular-season games, highlighting how unimportant they are in contrast.

While it’s a little unsettling to see players openly lust for the $500,000 cash prize despite their salaries, the pros here far outweighed the cons from this perspective.

It felt meaningful. And that, in the most basic sense, was all the NBA could’ve hoped for.

Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell flexes as he celebrates a play during the NBA Cup championship game against the Pacers.

(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

The glimpse

Lost in Anthony Davis’ dominance, James’ unending prime, Austin Reaves’ flu game and D’Angelo Russell’s Bruce Brown vengeance, the Lakers unleashed their vision as a defensive monster on the league in Vegas.

Staggering the minutes of Cam Reddish and Jarred Vanderbilt, the Lakers always had one big, rangy defender capable of guarding almost anyone on the court, forcing New Orleans’ C.J. McCollum into near-impossible shots in the semis and trapping the Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton out of the finals. Add Taurean Prince into a less-strenuous defensive role, and the Lakers have some on-ball size to go along with Davis’ paint mastery.

While it’s probably not smart to count on these kinds of efforts from James on the defensive end nightly, there’s some proof of concept to what kind of defense the Lakers can have.

“Elite,” one coach described it to me.

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Song of the week

“So Much Wine” by Phoebe Bridgers

A beautiful cover of the Handsome Family song from 2000. Longtime readers of this space know how highly I think of Bridgers — one of the best voices in music right now.

In case you missed it

LeBron James and Anthony Davis lead Lakers to NBA in-season tournament title

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Here’s the actual reason the Lakers can’t wear black for NBA in-season tournament game

LeBron James master class lifts Lakers into NBA in-season tournament final