Paul Pierce says LAL will get ‘smacked’ in playoffs: ‘Same story every year’

As is the case every season for the Los Angeles Lakers, the success of this campaign will be measured by how well they fare in the playoffs. With guard Austin Reaves playing some of the best basketball of his career to begin the 2025-26 season and a new supporting cast in the fold, perhaps a deep playoff run is in the cards for the Purple and Gold.

However, Boston Celtics legend Paul Pierce is one person who isn’t bullish on the Lakers’ chances. The all-time great scorer proclaimed that the Lakers will get “smacked” in the 2026 NBA Playoffs.

“It’s gonna be the same story every year with the Lakers,” Pierce said. “It’s gonna be the hype train, playoffs gonna come, and then they gonna get smacked up.”

Lakers fans should maybe take any criticism Pierce has for the team with a grain of salt, as folks would be hard-pressed to find many instances of him praising the squad. A former Lakers rival, he might still be salty that his Celtics lost to the Purple and Gold in seven games in the 2010 NBA Finals, though he and his crew did win a title against L.A. two years earlier in 2008.

But Pierce does have a point that the Lakers have flamed out early on in the playoffs in recent years. Los Angeles has bowed out in the opening round of the playoffs in each of the last two seasons, and its first-round exit in the 2025 NBA Playoffs was particularly disappointing.

The Lakers were the No. 3 seed in the West and held home-court advantage against the Minnesota Timberwolves, yet they got thoroughly outplayed in that best-of-seven series. Los Angeles won just one game before it got eliminated, and it also lost all but one of its three home games at Crypto.com Arena.

It remains to be seen if the Lakers will advance deep into the 2026 NBA Playoffs, but they certainly need guard Luka Doncic and forward LeBron James to be healthy in order to do just that. Both players are dealing with injuries at the moment, and James — the league’s oldest active player — has yet to even make his season debut with the Lakers thanks to a sciatica injury.