From the redoubtable Jason Gay’s latest column in the Wall Street Journal:

The Loopy Mess of LakerFail

The Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Miami Heat on Sunday. This is not wildly important. What’s important is that the Lakers continue to be a mess. Barring a shocking turnabout, they will not win the NBA title. It’s quite possible they may not make the playoffs; as it stands right now, they wouldn’t even qualify. They have lost more than 50% of their games. They are inhaling their second coach. They have been playing a little better lately, including Sunday in Miami. But that’s not important, either. What’s important is that they usually play like strangers who met on an airport shuttle bus. What’s important is that they bicker. That is the role they are playing.

The Lakers have made a huge deal out of being a Big Mess.

As Gay says, “LakerFail is treated with the instant-update gusto of an international war zone or an election night.”

But that’s not what’s earned him Quote o’ the Day accolades. Rather, it’s this:

The interest in these Lakers is not very different than the obsession in the recent iterations of the Boston Red Sox, a baseball team that plummeted spectacularly from contention in September 2011, fired its manager and then spent most of 2012 walking around the AL East with an aluminum pail over its head.

Full disclosure: The hardworking staff has been a Made Yankee Fan in Boston since 1974.

Still, you have to admit “walking around the AL East with an aluminum pail over its head” is flat-out funny.