ESPN's NBA insiders picked the Lakers as the team likeliest to disappoint this coming season, and the first thing worth saying about that Lakers disappointment prediction is that the word is doing an enormous amount of work. Disappointment is not a talent grade. It is an expectations grade. Those are different animals, and only one of them plays defense.
That distinction matters more in Los Angeles than anywhere else in the sport. There are teams in this league that can win 47 games, take a series, and get a parade of think pieces about how the culture is finally right. The Lakers do not live in that neighborhood. They get measured against banners in the rafters, and when a franchise is graded on a scale that starts at the Finals, the space between a good season and a "disappointment" is about four inches wide. Half the league would sign for the Lakers' floor and call it a career year.
checked the almanac: the 2012-13 Lakers added Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, spent October getting fitted for a coronation, and finished 45-37 as the seventh seed before San Antonio swept them out in the first round. that is the platonic ideal of a disappointing season. it was also 45 wins.
So I hold preseason panel picks the way I hold any consensus: loosely, and with respect for how often the room is wrong together. Insider polls are a temperature reading on expectation, not a projection of outcome. They are useful precisely because they tell you where the bar has been set, which is the number the Lakers will actually be judged against no matter what happens on the floor.
What comes next is the only part that settles it. Camp answers the fit questions. October and November answer the health questions, which have decided more Lakers seasons than any scheme ever has. And somewhere around the halfway point of the year we find out whether the panel read a real structural problem or just picked the loudest name on the board because the exercise required a name.
What I'm watching: whether this team defends. Every Lakers season that got labeled a letdown had the same fingerprint, a roster that could score and could not get consecutive stops in a playoff series. That is the tell to track, not the win column.