Despite being the league’s face franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers continue to sell the “NBA royalty” mantra.

Without a doubt, the Lakers have the history, championships, and media reach, but isn’t it time to confront the harsh reality that they are basking in past glory? It’s been almost six years since their last championship, and ten years before that, they won the ring.

They might be the NBA’s Dallas Cowboys. Actually, it’s not “might.” Yes, they are.

Both sports franchises are full of hype and appear to have sky-high expectations each season, but they frequently leave fans wondering what could have been. The Cowboys haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1995, despite being “America’s Team” with endless media coverage. The Lakers have 17 championships, but since the 2020 bubble ring, it’s been a rollercoaster of play-in drama and early playoff exits.

The NFL’s comparison to the Lakers may appear harsh given that LA has won championships since the turn of the millennium, but the parallels in overexposure and underperformance are spot on.

Consider this: the Cowboys start each NFL season as headline-grabbing playoff contenders, only to fade away. Sounds familiar? That is the Lakers in every sense, and their current trajectory will continue this season. 

The Weird (But Honest) Similarities Between the Lakers and the Cowboys

Unrelenting Media Hype and Expectations

The Lakers are the darling of the press, for good measure. They attract more home and global audiences and they have more games on national TV than any other team in the NBA. If not for the fact that they had a championship pedigree, one might say they are an industry plant. They are always microscopes first when talking about chances of teams winning the ring and when that doesn’t happen, it’s also a good narrative.

However this “expectation overload” is not an excuse to keep crumbling and hanging on to the fact that they are the most storied franchise in NBA history.

Star Power with Inconsistent Support

The Lakers, of course, are not resting on their laurels; they are always trying to be the best team and win championships. However, “trying” doesn’t cut it when they don’t build on a good core.

The Magic Johnson Showtime era and the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal era both had quality supporting casts aside from their main stars. But in recent years, that is far from the case. It used to be a lot of LeBron James and, even though they brought in Anthony Davis and later won a championship, that is as far as they have gone to have a title-winning roster.

Now it seems to be all about Luka Doncic, but the title-contending roster is absent.

With the addition of Doncic, who is perennially MVP-caliber, his pairing with even a 41-year-old James should ideally be a top-notch team, but the roster’s depth issues show in LA’s 36-24 record, which is a few games shy of dropping into the play-in spot. 

It feels like the Lakers are hugging this spot every year at this time, doesn’t it?

Playoff Heartbreak and Underachievement

The illusion of a deep postseason has always followed Lakers fans, but at the end of the day, it’s disappointment. Since winning that title in 2020, the franchise has only gone past the first round once and even that run ended the following round. Even that championship they won just put a gloss over a horrible mid-2010s as they missed the playoffs entirely in six years before that.

That illusion is the one that puts them as contenders without the results to show for it.

Iconic Brand with Loyal, Demanding Fans 

NFL fans love watching Cowboys fans sit through their team’s loss. NBA fans love watching Lakers fans sit through their team’s loss. There’s a key similarity in how fans of each sport see both of these teams.

Come rain or sunshine, the Lakers will always remain “America’s Team.” They have a massive global following. But one thing with such massive loyalty is that it turns toxic when it goes sideways. If the Lakers go on another serious title drought, the fans become frustrated with the mediocrity, which puts pressure on management. The exact same can be said about the Cowboys.

The fame has floated them through failures, but it sinks innovation being viewed as a team that has past glory.

*Cough, Jerry Jones.*

Management Scrutiny and Slow Pivots

Just last year, the Lakers traded Davis for Doncic in a blockbuster, yet they aren’t better than last season and aren’t looking close to being championship-calibre. Head coach JJ Redick might not be feeling the tension at the moment, but he’s surely aware that no coach in LA has lasted more than three years in charge.

He is currently in his first year and a first-round exit again, or even slipping into the playoffs, will put him in the pressure cooker like the majority of his predecessors.

The Lakers Cannot Afford to Fumble Doncic’s Prime

One positive note is that the Lakers have Doncic as the superstar guard is just reaching his apex. The 27-year-old arrived in LA on the heels of a scoring title and having led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2024.

The Lakers front office floated the idea of him being the one to carry the team post-James, but the bigger thing at play here is when actually will the “post-James era” begin?

For now, Doncic is leading the NBA in scoring this season, but the Lakers aren’t on a form that suggests they would compete this year. They have already lost 24 games this season, only eight less than they did last year, and they still have 22 games left to play.

The roster is offense-heavy, averaging 115.9 points per game, but defensively they have allowed almost similar points. The core just isn’t good enough. James’ future feels like a cloud over this team, kind of a sideshow distraction that feels like it is pulling the franchise down when it should be ascending. Maybe this is the last year the league’s all time leading scorer will play, but if it isn’t, how the Lakers manage James’ contract situation will be a pivotal factor in their hopeful resurgence next year.

Meanwhile, Austin Reaves is having a breakout year and has shown special flashes of being Doncic’ long-term co-star, especially in earlier this season when James was working his way back from an injury he suffered during last year’s postseason.

Looking back at Doncic’s stint in Dallas, he led the Mavericks to the Finals with Kyrie Irving and role players clicking. In LA, without that synergy, the Lakers are risking his prime, squandering peak years on good-not-great teams.

This summer feels like a major player in how the Doncic-era in LA will shake out.