One notable NBA player is happily dancing on the Los Angeles Lakers’ grave right now.
The Lakers were officially eliminated from the playoffs on Wednesday night with a 103-96 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 5 of their first-round series at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, Calif. It marked the second straight season that the Lakers failed to make it beyond the first round.
After the final buzzer, Charlotte Hornets big man Mark Williams had an interesting post to X. Williams simply shared a smiley-face emoji.
Williams does not post on X very often and has less than 1,000 total posts on his page. It was also his first post in 10 days, so the timing here probably was not a coincidence.
You may recall that the Lakers agreed on a trade with the Hornets for the 23-year-old energy center Williams back in February. But the Lakers backed out of the trade days later, citing multiple concerns with Williams’ physical.
Williams’ camp was not at all pleased with the way that the Lakers handled business, and his agent even slammed them over the entire saga. Meanwhile, Williams himself said that he was “shocked” that the Lakers failed him on his physical and strongly indicated that he disagreed with their decision.
Now with the Lakers suffering an early playoff exit, Williams is apparently feeling vindicated that the team who didn’t want him has now fallen flat. It was especially poetic too considering that the Lakers badly needed size in their series against the Timberwolves. Rudy Gobert blew up for 27 points and 24 rebounds in the Game 5 clincher as the Lakers were forced to trot out 6-foot-10 Maxi Kleber, 6-foot-8 Rui Hachimura, and 6-foot-7 Dorian Finney-Smith as pseudo-centers.
