Did The Lakers Miss The Playoffs Because LeBron Has Bad Breath?

Now that Channing Frye has called it a career, he opened up to The Athletic to talk about everything he’s learned during his time in the league, and any secrets he may want to pass along to current players. It’s a really fun read that covers everything from Kevin Love parties, getting fucked up on margaritas and even if you’re not a Cavs fan or a Frye fan, it’s still a really interesting read.

There was one part of that story that stood out to me though, and I think it may have explained why the Lakers were so terrible this season

Three things you’ll tell your kids about LeBron?

“No. 1, he has smelly breath. Smelly breath. No. 2, he was a freak of nature. And then No. 3, Kyle Korver and I fixed his jumper for one year. (Funny, Korver takes the credit for that.) I know, but Korver, Channing, it’s all the same. It’s all about Korver.”

Forget the fact that Frye is probably joking and just think about this for a second. It makes perfect sense. Think about your regular life, preferably if you work in an office. Your boss comes up to you with this laundry list of tasks for you to do, maybe describes some giant project he wants you to handle. You want to pay attention but you can’t stop focusing on his hot ass breath. Every word is going in one ear and out the other because you’re just trying not to barf. Being around someone with terrible breath may be the worst thing on planet. You want to get as far away from those people as possible.

Now let’s relate this to the Lakers struggles. You’ve seen the photos

Is this because the Lakers are dysfunctional or because nobody wants to be anywhere near the nuclear gas coming out of LeBron’s mouth? The Lakers had one of the worst defenses in the entire league, was this a talent issue or but because every time they got into a quick huddle on the court to talk matchups every player couldn’t stop focusing on his breath instead of whatever defensive assignment he was giving them? When you think about it, things really start to add up.

Did things get so bad that the young players revolted, maybe kept putting mouthwash and gum in his locker that LeBron got so fed up that his only move was to then pulled off the Anthony Davis fiasco. Crazy? Sure, but not that crazy. Then I start thinking about all the wine LeBron drinks, and maybe the fact he’s doing that to divert the stench. Perhaps things spiraled so far out of control he was forgetting to brush his teeth at night because he was so hammered. Listen I’m just trying to make sense of that Channing Frye is telling us here. You don’t see any of the other contending teams stars be labeled as people with bad breath and their teams are doing fine. LeBron’s individual basketball production was on par with what we’ve always seen but something all year felt off.

It wasn’t his hatred of his coach or the young players that killed the Lakers season. That’s an easy scapegoat in my opinion. The closer you look, it was clearly LeBron’s hot ass breath.