Shannon Sharpe won’t be on ESPN to answer for it for the foreseeable future, but his “Lakers in 5” meme will now live in infamy as one of the great cold takes in sports.
For months, Sharpe was on First Take and his podcast saying that his beloved Lakers would roll through the playoffs, specifically the top seed Oklahoma City Thunder, by repeating the refrain “Lakers in 5” with various basketball and pop culture references in front of it.
However, the basketball gods have a very wry sense of humor. The Lakers crashed out in the first round of the NBA playoffs as the #3 seed as they were defeated by the Minnesota Timberwolves in, you guessed it, five games.
Los Angeles made Rudy Gobert look like Wilt Chamberlain with 27 points and 24 rebounds in Game 5 as they rolled to a 103-96 victory in spite of shooting an incredibly putrid 7-47 from downtown.
And after the game, T’Wolves superstar Anthony Edwards made sure to let everyone know that he was in on the “Lakers in 5” meme and definitely saw the delicious irony in the fact that his team were able to knock out the celebrated Lakers in five games on their home floor – both at the postgame press conference and in the tunnels afterwards. He even mimicked Shannon Sharpe with an “Ant Man, Batman, Superman, Lakers in 5” of his own.
For his part, Shannon Sharpe had a laugh at his own expense over the “Lakers in 5” meme coming back to haunt him while reacting to the defeat on his Nightcap podcast.
Of course, we won’t see Shannon Sharpe react to the downfall of his favorite team on ESPN’s First Take as he stepped away from the network while facing a sexual assault lawsuit that turned very public and very ugly last week.
About Matt Yoder