Podcast: Kyle Goon on why this miserable Lakers season was a championship tax

This Lakers season wasn’t fun for anyone. Not the players, not the fans, not the media, nor anyone else even tangentially connected to this team. By the end, as the injuries piled up, it felt like it was over before it started.

But to do one final autopsy on this year from hell, co-hosts Anthony Irwin and Harrison Faigen were joined in “The Lakers Lounge” by someone who came as close to going through all of it as anyone on the outside of the team could have: Kyle Goon of The O.C. Register, who spent 93 days in the bubble and has covered this nearly non-stop, 21-month-ish run from start to finish.

To start things off on a light note, Anthony and Harrison asked Kyle about how he became best friends with Andre Drummond...

...and then had a discussion about the truly exhausting nature of this last, seemingly endless run of basketball, and how it ultimately was the price for the team winning the championship. A price they’d obviously gladly pay to raise a banner, but an unfortunate tax nonetheless. Kyle offered some great context on Anthony Davis’ ultimately doomed training plan, how LeBron James got through the year, and how fatigued everyone involved was by the end.

Then, Anthony wanted to ask Kyle about how many promises this team made to role players, and if that ultimately was a culture shift from last season. And finally, Harrison wrapped up the show by asking Kyle some tough exit interview questions about whether or not he was personally responsible for Markieff Morris’ shooting falling off a cliff, and why LeBron apparently decided to name his Space Jam opponents after Kyle’s family.

You can listen to all that and more on our latest episode in the player embedded below, and to make sure you don’t miss a single one moving forward, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen, Anthony at @AnthonyIrwinLA, and Kyle at @kylegoon. You can subscribe to Kyle’s newsletter we mentioned, “Purple and Bold,” here.

And for a daily short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.