The LA Times is reporting that Lakers fans are overwhelmingly predicting a championship this season for the Lakers.

Based on a series of poll questions, there's very little sapping the enthusiasm of Laker fans. There's an 87% majority of fans who say the Lakers' title chances are already a foregone conclusion. A 38% plurality simply gush over the Lakers' overwhelming talent in the Lakers' Fantastic 5 starting lineup. Even 50% believe the Lakers will collect 64 to 72 wins, meaning many expect the purple and gold at least to be within striking distance of matching the Chicago Bulls' 72-win record set in the 1995-96 season.

Now, this is funny. These same Lakers fans that last season were calling the Celtics old geezers and talking about sending them to the old folks home and making geritol jokes are predicting that this Lakers team, that is way older overall than the Celtics were last season, will dominate the league. The average age of their starters is almost 33 years old with a point guard who is a whopping 38 years old. Their prize catch to shore up their bench is 36 years old. Any youth they have on the team is mostly unproven.

Not just the age is in question, either. Kobe has struggled with 2 bad knees for years and has been known not to play well with others at times. Steve Nash has had knee and back problems. Dwight Howard, their youngster at 26, is coming off back surgery. Ron Artest is a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. Pau Gasol has earned the name Gasoft for disappearing in big games. And this is the great team that they expect to dominate the league? My, my these fans are delusional.


To illustrate my point, most of you are familiar with my Comments from the Other Side posts where I gather comments from the opponent's forums during games. I did these posts for each of the Lakers' games against the Thunder in the playoffs this past post season. The comments always started off with a lot of bravado, kind of like the boasts we see now about next year. At first it was "We got this" "They have no chance" "Kobe will destroy them" etc, etc. By the end of the game, however, the comments were much different. Here's just a sampling of some of the comments from the end of that series:

Just leave gasol in okc after this game and also mike brown

Gasol's probably doing jumping jacks in his head knowing he won't be back next year. Only insane guys like MWP would wanna play with Kobe.

Kobe wouldn't even start for the OKC Thunder

Did they just say Kobeme is 1-8 in the 4th quarter? He's so clutch

Thanks Gasol for being too scared to go inside

Kobe lost this game with his hero ball

I hope Kobe retires

Pau ! Wow dude! Die

Does anyone remember Pau even playing tonight? Other than that IQ of an earthworm pass at the end?

Somebody please kill gasoft, what a way to finish his lakers carrer

I think the lakers FO will amnesty Kobe. I'm sick of him

How we can get something valuable back for gasol when he's clearly an absolute old sissy with a huge contract?!

Kobe is a piece of **** and will probably go down as the worst player to ever get inducted into the hall of fame

Bye bye Kobe. You're a ****ing *****!!! Don't let the door hit your *** on the way out you scrawny selfish little *****!!!!

Now, after reading that, think of the irony of these same fans today saying that Kobe and Pau, along with their 38 year old point guard and new center coming off back surgery, will lead them to a championship this season. Hilarious, isn't it?

[Discuss on CG Forums!]