Alright, so I wanted to dig into the Lakers’ old stats from that rough 2016-2017 season. Grabbed my coffee, fired up the laptop, and started hunting down numbers. First thing? Searched like crazy for official NBA season records. Took me forever to find reliable spreadsheets that weren’t broken links or paywalled.
What I Did Step by Step
Started pulling up game logs one by one. Manually punched in wins and losses into Excel like a caveman. Took two hours just to get all 82 games sorted. Found this messy PDF with team stats – almost tossed my keyboard when the dang thing froze twice. Had to screenshot tables because copying text turned into gibberish.
- Scraped points per game: Lakers averaged 104.6 but gave up 111.5? Ouch.
- Tracked home vs away: Only 17 wins at home?! Staples Center was a ghost town.
- Fourth quarter collapses: Marked 15 games where they led by 10+ and still lost. Painful.
Then I cross-checked player stats. Remembered Julius Randle’s injury mess – guy missed half the season. Threw Lou Williams’ bench numbers in too ’cause he carried them sometimes. Made color-coded tabs: losses in blood red, wins in sad light purple. Looked depressing.
Where Stuff Went Wrong
Tried calculating win percentage but Excel kept giving errors. Turns out I’d entered five games twice like an idiot. Then my cat walked on the keyboard and deleted December’s data. Started over while muttering swear words.
Biggest headache? Finding injury reports. Had to dig through three-year-old tweets from beat reporters. Found out D’Angelo Russell missed 30 games. Mozgov’s contract numbers made me laugh-cry – $64 million for 7 points a game? Seriously?
Final Numbers That Stuck
- 26 wins, 56 losses
- Worst record since moving to LA (tied with 2015 season)
- 15-game losing streak in January/February
Honestly, it’s wild that squad lost to the 28-win Suns twice. Finished typing it all at 2am with cold coffee beside me. Not glamorous work, but hey – now we know exactly how ugly that tank job was. Makes you appreciate LeBron-era ball.
