After the Los Angeles Lakers' Friday night (March 22) loss to the Brooklyn Nets, it's official. The team will miss the NBA playoffs for the sixth year in a row. It's a major frustration for Lakers fans after last summer brought a lot of excitement with the signing of NBA free agent LeBron James. It also marks the first time in 14 years that King James will be watching the playoffs from home rather than participating. LeBron spoke about missing the NBA postseason after his team's latest loss and his outlook on the future.

LeBron discusses performance, missing playoffs

King James spoke to the media following his team's 111-106 home loss on Friday. He called his own performance "s----y" in the game. Despite scoring 25 points to go with 14 rebounds and nine assists, LeBron also had eight turnovers and shot just 8-for-25 for the game. However, the bigger picture is that the team fell to 31-41 with 10 games to go in the season. That means the L.A. Lakers are now officially out of the playoff picture in the Western Conference. It's Lebron's first time on the outside since much earlier in his career.

"It's not what we signed up for. Throughout the year, things happened. Suspensions, injuries, things of that nature," LeBron told the reporters.

He added that the team wasn't able to "play sustainable basketball" for full games. However, James remains positive about the future suggesting, "Just try to get better tonight, move on to tomorrow, and go from there."

Lebron James also mentioned the "playoffs are never promised" and he'll "continue to put the work in" to get better.

However, it's likely that the Lakers will continue their load management with LeBron's playing, as he's probably going to alternate between sitting a game and playing a game to finish the season.

Lakers looking to offseason improvement

The Lakers speculation will pick up as the summer season approaches. While there has been plenty of discussion over potential trades or free agents signings, L.A.

will have some interesting assets and situations to work with. One of them will be acquiring an NBA draft lottery pick, which they'll learn of during the playoffs. That's one good thing that will happen for the team during the postseason. They may get lucky enough to land one of the NCAA's top five projected prospects, such as Zion Williamson.

From there, the team will determine whether to package that pick, other picks, and some of their players to make a possible trade package for Anthony Davis. There's speculation they'll try to sign NBA free agent big man DeMarcus Cousins, as well as Jimmy Butler.

Adding those two players with LeBron James could be just enough to make the team a contender. However, one has to wonder which young players or other roster pieces will be expendable.

Still, it looks like, with this latest situation, the only way to go is up for a team that was already dealing with high expectations in a season full of injury and insult via trade headlines. The summer should provide LeBron James plenty of time to refocus and prepare for a monster run in the 2019-20 NBA season.
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