The uncomfortable lesson for the Los Angeles Lakers down 3-0 - ESPN

THERE ARE HYPERBARIC chambers and then there is the giant hyperbaric chamber at the UCLA Medical Center. Lakers star Austin Reaves spent the better part of four weeks in this enormous tube as he tried to recover from a Grade 2 oblique muscle tear he had suffered April 2 during a game in Oklahoma City.

Initially doctors told Reaves he would be out 4-6 weeks with the injury, but probably on the longer end of that timeline.

The Lakers initially assumed he would be out until the conference finals, team sources told ESPN, but Reaves was determined to get back for at least some of the Lakers' playoff run.

«I left my house every day around 7:30 in the morning to get treatment and didn't come home until about 8 at night,» Reaves told ESPN. «I was going crazy trying to get back.… I was in that hyperbaric chamber all the time.»

The giant hyperbaric chamber at UCLA Health can accommodate up to 18 people and simulates the pressure of being 30 feet underwater — roughly double the amount of pressure at the surface. That pressure promotes healing by forcing pure oxygen to dissolve into your blood at concentrations far beyond what's possible on land.

Reaves made it back in four weeks, in time for the Lakers' improbable first-round series win over the Houston Rockets.

But this round, against the Oklahoma City Thunder, it seems like nothing Reaves or the Lakers do matters. It's an entirely different kind of pressure.

Because the inevitability of this series illuminates an uncomfortable reality for the Lakers.

For years — decades, really — the NBA's most glamorous franchise has been guided by a singular principle: recruit and retain superstars, let them lead the team to championship glory, and figure out the rest later. It worked