CLEVELAND, Ohio — As the NBA regular season nears an end, the Cleveland Cavaliers are right where pretty much everybody expected them to be without LeBron James — out of the playoff picture, which is also where LeBron’s new team, the Los Angeles Lakers, will finish. While the Cavs’ finish was expected, the Lakers’ finish was a bit of a surprise, especially after they rose as high as No. 4 in the Western Conference and destroyed Golden State on Christmas. The same game a groin injury to LeBron started a slide from which the team did not recover. Even when James returned from the injury, the Lakers’ young guys were in a funk over a botched trade attempt for New Orleans’ super star Anthony Davis, in which virtually everybody but LeBron was considered trade bait. The Cavs have had their problems without LeBron, but they haven’t been quite the wreck the Lakers have been this season. Crowquill, by Plain Dealer artist Ted Crow, appears three times a week in The Plain Dealer and on cleveland.com.<doc-sep>And it appears he will soon have to stomach that it’s going on his ledger in the most permanent ink that he was unable to bring a halt to the longest postseason drought in Lakers history — barring an unforeseen resurrection from a fractured group that sits four and a half games out of a Western Conference playoff berth with 19 games to go. No matter how much culpability you wish to assign James for what is poised to go down as the Lakers’ franchise-record sixth successive trip to the draft lottery, he’s going to have to own this as much as the front-office tandem of Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka as well as the under-fire coach Luke Walton. The LeBron Way, for years and years, has worked something like this: He inevitably gets most of the credit when his team flourishes; his teammates absorb the bulk of the blame when things unravel. But this is different. This would be the jarring sight of James, fresh off his eighth consecutive finals appearance, actually missing out on the N.B.A. postseason for the first time since his second professional season in 2004-5, when he was just 20. Even though he can rightly point to his recent groin strain as the biggest standings-altering disruption these Lakers have endured, James surely understands that his maiden campaign in Los Angeles is bound to be recorded in many precincts as a failure to make the playoffs that belongs to him.<doc-sep>Back in July, the NBA seemed to have struck gold, as LeBron James — the most famous athlete in North America and maybe the world — joined the league’s premier franchise in the entertainment capital of the world at or near the peak of his powers. The NBA should have retweeted the news with a money bag emoji. Alas. The Lakers’ post-Kobe malaise was stronger than an aging LeBron’s ability to extract LA from mediocrity. LA fell out of the playoff race in February and found itself eliminated in March. Not only is the NBA left with a moribund Lakers franchise, but for the first time in a long time, the league will have a postseason without its bigger star. To be sure, this is an absolute disaster for the league, the Lakers, and LeBron. James, for his part, came to LA to give his young family everything they desired and to build his second act as an entertainment mogul. Space Jam 2 is coming. LeBron’s Spring Hill Entertainment is producing projects left and right. Bronny James will possibly be the most famous high school player since his dad. But LA was also about returning glory to a storied, but broken franchise. It was about growing James’ personal legend in an already legendary jersey, joining the pantheon of Mikan, Baylor, West, Kareem, Magic, Van Exel, Shaq, and, yes, Kobe. It was about bashing up against the Warriors from another angle, maybe with another star partner. It wasn’t about winning 35 games and being on a beach by Easter. LeBron’s status as a Lakers legend is currently somewhere between Karl Malone and Gary Payton. This is a nightmare. No one needs to explain why this is such a dark twist for the Lakers, who can’t seem to climb out of a pit of their own making. They finally recruited a major free agent — the biggest free agent of all! — and this is the result. It’s like saving up for years to afford a new car and smashing it on the way home. What an incredible letdown. As for the NBA, not only did it not get to see the full potential of a star as bright as LeBron under lights as bright as they are for the Lakers in LA, but the league now doesn’t even get its biggest star in the playoffs at all. The Eastern Conference playoffs haven’t always been super compelling in the past decade and a half, but the league could always sell fans and casual viewers on the presence of LeBron. Just watch, and you could be a witness to something glorious. That promise will be unfulfilled this spring. In fact, if the ratings go sour through the playoffs, this could show the NBA the perils of relying on one star for so much. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this league suffered mightily when Michael Jordan retired for the second time after the 1997-98 season. So much of the league’s success in the ‘90s was wrapped up in Jordan and the Bulls’ dominance. When that ended, the league (and the one shoe company so heavily intertwined with the league, Jordan, and, not coincidentally, LeBron) didn’t really have a quick pivot in their arsenal. The NBA has other exciting superstars to put on a pedestal. Many of those exciting superstars will be in the playoffs. Perhaps this postseason without LeBron can be — instead of a drag on profits — an opportunity to continue to build up the next LeBrons. Giannis Antetokounmpo, given his incredible talent, shocking physicality, and golden personality, seems to be the obvious successor for LeBron’s Golden Boy of the NBA title. Giannis plays for the East’s top-seeded Bucks, a team without a ton of recent success, but one with a fairly storied history in the earlier decades of the league. Antetokounmpo has a global fan base, and he’s much like LeBron in the sense that he has captured the hearts of the casual fans who experience him as well as the hardcore basketball fanatics. Like LeBron, Giannis is for everyone (except the haters in Boston or Philly). The NBA put Giannis and the Bucks on Christmas Day ... in the noon game against the Knicks. If Giannis is the next LeBron in a marketing sense, the league needs to make marketing him a bigger priority. That can start now in the LeBron vacuum, with the Bucks looking like a legit NBA Finals threat and Giannis potentially winning MVP. Assuming the Bucks don’t exit early, this postseason should be all about making sure every kid in this country moderately interested in basketball spends the entire summer emulating Giannis on the court and asks for an Antetokounmpo jersey and his shoes (the Nike Freak 1s reportedly hit this summer) for their next birthday. Zion Williamson, of course, will be a huge opportunity for post-LeBron marketing largess. Luka Doncic, Trae Young, a redeemed and post-burner Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell, the young and smiley Kings, Joel Embiid, the leftover Warriors, maybe someday Anthony Davis, maybe someday Karl-Anthony Towns — there are options. But the NBA and Nike need to start investing in the players to get anything of them in a position to capitalize on true global fame when the opportunity strikes. Otherwise, I suppose we’ll all just wait for Bronny.<doc-sep>
With 7 minutes 51 seconds left in the third quarter of the Lakers’ stunning win over the back-to-back NBA champion Golden State Warriors on Christmas night, LeBron James strained his left groin to create the turning point on what was shaping up as a promising season. In an interview with Spectrum Sports on Friday night, James indicated that his injury and the 17 games he was sidelined over five weeks sent the Lakers to the abyss of which they were never able to recover. On that same fateful night, Lakers veteran point guard Rajon Rondo sustained a sprained right ringer finger that required surgery for a ligament tear, leaving him out for four weeks. The Lakers now were down their two leaders. Rondo returned to play Jan. 24, but the Lakers continued to spiral. “So, now you take the two masterminds that we brought here to help lead these young guys off the floor for 11 weeks collectively, that’s the disappointing [thing],” James said. “That’s disappointing for me because I knew exactly where we were at that point. And we’ve just never been able to get it back from after that.” The Lakers will miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season, leaving James frustrated that his body didn’t hold up so he could carry his team to the postseason. James, who had played in eight consecutive NBA Finals and had not missed the playoffs since the 2004-05 season, was disappointed he could not lead the Lakers the way he has been accustomed to because he was sitting on the bench out of uniform. “And me being the leader I am, yes, you can lead a little bit,” said James, who the Lakers decided would sit out the rest of the season after the game against Charlotte on March 30. “You can be like, ‘Yo, I saw that right there, you can make that play.’ Or, ‘Maybe you should have did this.’ Or, ‘Hey, yo, we should …’ But, like, being in the foxhole, like me being in uniform, me being on the floor, I know I can command my guys more than that. You can only say so much in a suit as a player. … “But I know what I can do for the franchise. I know what I can do for the team. So I’m basically trying to speed up my body to get back on the floor, but also my mind is kind of shot because I just want to be out there for my guys.” UP NEXT VS. UTAH When: 6:30 p.m., Sunday. On the air. TV: Spectrum SportsNet; Radio: 710, 1330. Update: The Jazz are in fifth place in the Western Conference, one game behind the fourth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers, so Utah has a shot at home-court advantage in the playoffs. Utah is led in scoring by second-year guard Donovan Mitchell (23.5 points per game) and is led in rebounding by center Rudy Gobert (12.9), who is second on the team in scoring (15.7). broderick.turner@latimes.com Twitter: @BA_Turner