A Lakers fan’s guide to surviving the NBA hiatus

For at least the next month, the NBA season will be suspended as a result of the growing threat of COVID-19, or the coronavirus. That means the Los Angeles Lakers won’t play again until at least mid-April.

For many of us, Lakers basketball is what gets us through the week, and with how successful the team has been this season, it’s been a source of joy as opposed to the background noise it’s been in recent years. Now, that’s been abruptly taken away.

In an effort to make life without basketball easier, we’ve compiled a list of films, podcasts and books that Lakers fans can stay occupied with for the next month.

Streaming

• The official NBA championship DVDs for the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009 and 2010 Lakers are available to stream for free for Amazon Prime members. Five championships in an 11-year span!
• All three parts of ESPN Films’ “Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies” are available to stream with an ESPN+ subscription. If you didn’t have strong feelings towards Celtics fans before, you will after watching this documentary.
• “Kobe Bryant’s Muse” and “Quiet Storm: The Ron Artest Story” are available to stream with a Showtime subscription.
• “More Than A Game,” a documentary chronicling the rise of LeBron James, is available to stream on Starz.
• LeBron James’ voice-acting debut, “Smallfoot,” is available to stream with an HBO Now subscription. “Trainwreck” is also available for rent, but you can probably skip that one, even if you have time.
• “Kazaam,” the 1996 film that stars Shaquille O’Neal as a genie, is available to stream on Disney+. “Kazaam” has a 6% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it has Shaq in it, so it’s worthy of its spot on this list.

Podcasts

• The Silver Screen & Roll podcast feed, obviously.
• “The Official Lakers Podcast” with Mike Trudell and Aaron Larsuel.
• “The Laker Film Room Podcast” with Pete Zayas and Darius Soriano.
• “Locked On Lakers” with Anthony Irwin.
• “The Lowe Post” with Zach Lowe is always a fun and informative listen about the whole league.
• “The Sterling Affairs,” hosted by Ramona Shelburne, is a great listen with some Lakers ties.
• “Book of Basketball 2.0,” hosted by Bill Simmons. Simmons doesn’t always have the best Lakers takes, but he’s a knowledgeable basketball historian, and the guests he has add incredible value.
• If you want to listen to something with nothing to do with basketball or society for a while, our genius editor-in-chief co-hosts “Rewind and Reconsider,” a podcast where he and his fiancee take a look back at classic movies from childhood. No, I wasn’t strongly encouraged to include this!

Books

• “The Mamba Mentality: How I Play” by Kobe Bryant
• “The Show: The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Worlds of Those Who Lived It” by Rolan Lazenby
• “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s” by Jeff Pearlman
• “The Last Season: A Team in Search of Its Soul” by Phil Jackson
• “When the Game Was Ours” by Jackie MacMullan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson
• “LeBron Inc.: The Making of a Billion-Dollar Athlete” by Brian Windhorst

Obviously nothing can compare to the rush of seeing LeBron James throw a lob to Anthony Davis in transition, but hopefully this helps fill the time between now and when we can watch the Lakers dominate the league again.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @RadRivas.