John Raoux/Associated Press
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — It was not a season. For the Los Angeles Lakers, it was an obstacle course.
It was 12 months packed with tragedies and togetherness. It was disjointed and odd, unprecedented and often unpleasant, an odyssey that began for them in a Chinese hotel amid a geopolitical feud and ended in a mostly empty arena at Walt Disney World, the site of the world’s most famous bubble since the invention of chewing gum.
But for all the disruptive forces that rocked the N.B.A., the Lakers triumphed in the end.