LA sports teams’ Class of 2015-16 gets a failing grade – Los Angeles Times

Spring is waning, summer is coming, nine grueling months in a classroom are ending, and the annual questions have arrived.

So, how was your school year?

Pass some big tests? Take some cool field trips? Make some new friends? Learn anything?

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For Los Angeles sports teams, providing those answers while racing out of the classroom is the verbal equivalent of face-planting on the playground asphalt.

Their school year stunk. The worst school year ever. From September to May, it was a two-semester study in madness.

After extensive computing, it appears the Los Angeles sports teams finished the school year with a GPA of 1.0, and not because that matches Nick Young’s career assist average.

Pass some big tests? Flunked them all, from a National League division series, to the Holiday Bowl, to the Foster Farms Bowl, to the Stanley Cup playoffs, to basically the entire NBA season.

Take some cool field trips? Created an ugly scene everywhere, collapsing in Queens, croaking in Raleigh, crumbling in Portland.

Make some new friends? Um, no, but said goodbye to plenty of old ones, from Steve Sarkisian to Don Mattingly to Bruce Boudreau to Byron Scott.

Learn anything? Yeah, it was learned the Lakers could manage to say goodbye to one of the greatest players in franchise history with the worst record in franchise history. It was learned the Clippers curse still lives. It was learned that the Angels‘ Arte Moreno will never learn.

What a edumacation.

There was a time when this town was the valedictorian of the sports world, the school year filled with Lakers championships, USC title pushes, Kings and Ducks spring awakenings, deep Dodgers dives into October.

During a 16-year period from 1999 to 2014, from the beginning of the Phil Jackson era to the most recent Kings’ Stanley Cup championship, every school year featured a season that landed at least one Los Angeles team in either a championship setting or a couple of victories from that championship setting.

But during that period, big money began fluttering across the local sports landscape, billions of dollars for teams and talent and television, and strange happenings have followed. The Dodgers became too smart, the Lakers became too dumb, the Clippers became too combative, college football programs grew more distracted, college basketball programs began throwing bad money after bad, and even the Kings are now going through the growing pains of joining hockey’s elite.

Los Angeles sports has basically gotten too big for its britches, resulting in a school year spent squirming under a tight desk in the back row while producing mostly exaggerated sighs and spitballs.

A dunce cap for the Lakers rookie who taped his teammate’s romantic revelations. A suspension, literally, for Blake Griffin and his fist. An expulsion from the NCAA basketball tournament for a UCLA basketball team that once ran the joint.

Los Angeles sports flunked the tough classes, like geometry, the Dodgers choosing the biggest moment of their season to forget the existence of one corner of a diamond.

Los Angeles sports flunked the basic classes, like geography, both USC and UCLA football teams attending welcoming California bowl games only to both blow leads to Midwestern strangers.

Los Angeles sports even flunked media studies, and how do you flunk media studies? Oh yeah, when one of your biggest teams signs a television deal that leads to 60% of Los Angeles households being unable to watch your games.

Give a tardy slip to the USC basketball team for being late in covering Providence‘s Rodney Bullock on an inbounds play in the final seconds of the Trojans’ opening-round NCAA tournament loss. Put the Galaxy in detention for failing to defend their MLS championship with a defensive lapse in the final 20 minutes in a playoff game against Seattle.

As the Los Angeles sports teams clean out their lockers, one can see wads of crumpled hopes, layers of wrinkled opportunities, and only one item carefully folded and sealed for possible reuse next year — a banner containing the name of Steve Alford.

The honor roll is a short and weird one.

The biggest game was essentially an exhibition game, Kobe Bryant scoring 60 points in his final professional moments against the Utah Jazz.

The most valuable player is a guy whose franchise has so quickly disintegrated that folks are saying he should be traded, the Angels’ Mike Trout.

The most valuable team was one that didn’t even show up until the middle of the school year and hasn’t even played a game here yet, the Los Angeles Rams.

The biggest victory, well, has there truly been a major victory in this town since the Kings defeated the New York Rangers in a 3-2 overtime classic to win the Stanley Cup in June 2014?

Maybe next year will be better. Yeah, next year will be better. That’s what you always say while driving off to vacation, right?

Maybe the Dodgers make a move at the trading deadline to give them an exciting September. Maybe the Lakers get a top draft pick and a couple of free agents to join the Luke Walton revival. Maybe the Clippers make their last ride a memorable one. Maybe Clay Helton can be the answer, and Alford can stop the questions, and Josh Rosen really is the chosen one.

For now, when pulling out your 20015-16 yearbook for your favorite Los Angeles sports teams to sign, one bit of advice.

Leave it blank. They did.