The end result for the 2009-2010 Lakers was the same as the 2008-2009 Lakers, but the journey was markedly different. This season, they not only won their second straight championship, but did so by gaining a measure of revenge against their long time rivals who dispatched them in the 2008 Finals.
↵C.A. Clark of Silver Screen and Roll chronicled the bumpy ride that was the Lakers 2009-2010 season:
↵↵↵It’s always darkest before the dawn.
↵You shouldn’t need me to define such a tried and true axiom, but in basketball terms, it works like this. The Lakers always looked their worst, right before they performed their best. No matter how you slice it, the Lakers repeatedly took themselves to the brink of failure, only to magically solve the problems which troubled them at the last possible moment. The theme can be applied on a macroscopic level, a microscopic level, or on the regular scopic level, and still apply. We’ll do all three.
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Clark continued to do just that, in great detail.
↵In free agency news, Jordan Farmar became an unrestricted free agent tonight when the Lakers declined to make him a qualifying offer, per Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times:
↵↵If the Lakers had tendered Farmar a deal, known as a qualifying offer, he would have remained a restricted free agent and they would have had the rights to match any offer sheet he signed with another team.
↵“The Lakers cared enough to let me become a free agent,” Farmar said in a phone interview. “I was excited to hear it. I was real happy. If I do decide to leave, I’ll have nothing but positive things to remember about the Lakers.”
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