There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Los Angeles’s chances this season, but it’s also easy to see how it could all go wrong
This season’s Western Conference is set up to be an unforgiving gauntlet with no margin for error. Congested standings and heartbreak are certain, while luck, especially as it relates to health and injuries, may ultimately be what separates the dozen or so teams that enter this year intending to make the playoffs.
Some will catch a break and ride their continuity to a high seed, like last season’s Sacramento Kings. Others will disintegrate and find themselves in the lottery, like last season’s New Orleans Pelicans. No one knows who will endure, and no franchise is immune to a twist of fate. We do know, though, which teams are currently classified as contenders by the general public.
We also have an idea whose trajectory is pointing up and who may look a step slower than they used to. When we’re scouring the field with all this in mind, whether it’s betting odds or NBA.com’s annual GM survey, the Los Angeles Lakers may be the team most likely to fall short of their lofty expectations. There’s a lot to like—size, star power, a fixed identity—but there are also reasons to be skeptical.
This of course doesn’t mean they will be a disaster. Any roster that has LeBron James and Anthony Davis on it, coming off a Western Conference finals berth that saw Austin Reaves emerge as a legitimate third option, should be confident. Last year, the Lakers’ net rating was plus-14.3 in 390 regular-season minutes when James, Davis, and Reaves shared the floor. Shielded by a grit that contradicted the city’s glitzy milieu, their defense was coordinated fury, backed by a Defensive Player of the Year candidate in Davis, who probably would have won the award if he had played in enough games.
But how the Lakers fared across their remarkable five-week postseason run—against the depleted Memphis Grizzlies and a Golden State Warriors team that made sensible changes over the summer, before LeBron and Co. got swept by the Denver Nuggets—may not be indicative of where they actually stand. I know this isn’t a popular take. Millions of people believe the Lakers were a few seemingly impossible Jamal Murray jumpers away from making the Finals. And going off how this organization acted over the summer, establishing continuity for the first time in a couple of years, it clearly believed in what it saw.
First, the Lakers re-signed Reaves to what might be the best non-rookie-scale/max contract in the league—a no-brainer given all the different ways he directly and indirectly complemented Davis and James down the stretch last season. He’s their third-best player, and he has an outside chance of making an All-Star team someday; losing Reaves was never an option.
D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura are in a separate category. Here’s a pair of one-dimensional talents with thin playoff résumés who shouldn’t be on the floor in crunch time for any team that thinks it can win a title. Jarred Vanderbilt, a defensive linchpin who can’t shoot, is also back on a team-friendly extension.
The new faces worth mentioning are Gabe Vincent (a streaky, career 33.9 percent 3-point shooter), Taurean Prince (a solid 3-and-D wing who may eventually start and close games), Jaxson Hayes, Christian Wood (two bouncy, skilled, and flawed big men), and Cam Reddish (a 24-year-old journeyman). Out the door are Dennis Schröder and Lonnie Walker IV, a couple of critical role players from the Warriors series. Max Christie has a chance to crack Darvin Ham’s rotation as an intriguing, albeit unproven, commodity.
Altogether, this supporting cast raises a few fair questions for a team whose underlying recipe for success is turning stops into transition chances. Can the Lakers sustain a top-five defense with several below-average to suspect-at-best defenders in their rotation? (Per Second Spectrum, last season L.A.’s opponents shot 34.6 percent from behind the arc when uncontested or lightly contested. Only the Pelicans had more luck defending the 3-point line. On top of that, only the Rockets and Jazz allowed more of those attempts per 100 possessions.)
On the other end, do they have enough spacing even if Davis jacks up six 3s per game (which, in all likelihood, isn’t going to happen)? Will he be exclusively deployed at the five—by far their most advantageous look—or spend major minutes next to Wood or Hayes? Will opponents respect Hachimura’s shot, or will he regress back to who he was for most of his career up until last spring? Can Reaves still thrive as an italicized name on opposing scouting reports? All are unknowable and can turn for or against this team.
Beyond those questions lies an even bigger one that’s been asked several times over the past few years: How much longer can LeBron James be LeBron James? How is it humanly possible for someone who’ll be celebrating his 39th birthday (39!) in December to compete as one of the dozen or so best players in the world? Pretty much all of L.A.’s highest hopes still rest on him being that guy, and there’s a reality in which this is the season when his incredible production, efficiency, and physical dominance will finally start to wane in a noticeable way.
That doesn’t mean James will be anything at all close to ordinary—last time we saw this man in the conference finals, he damn near averaged a 28-point triple-double while making 52 percent of his shots. On most nights the game will still look like a cinch for James, and last year he converted a whopping 74.3 percent of his shots at the rim, on more attempts per game than anyone except Giannis Antetokounmpo. Only five players finished with a higher usage rate, too. His expected win differential was a sensational plus-24. (By comparison, the season’s MVP, Joel Embiid, had plus-25.)
But the unprecedented ground he’s walking on does warrant a discussion around his potential decline. Last year, his free throw rate dropped to a career-low level. His 10.6 drives per 100 possessions in last year’s playoffs were his fewest since at least 2013-14. A lingering foot injury helps explain why he looked like a synthetic version of his former self throughout that run, but signs of a breaking body are kind of the point. Here’s how many games LeBron has played in each season since 2018, when he appeared in all 82: 55, 67, 45, 56, 55.
Wear and tear have taken an understandable toll after 20 seasons. We’re literally talking about the oldest player in the league, someone who should pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most minutes ever logged in a career (playoffs and regular season) in a few months. Can he resemble an MVP candidate who gives more than a pinch of defensive effort, then turns around and manipulates everyone else with the ball in his hands?
Will these Lakers need James to be a dynamic engine who’s capable of solving just about any problem the opposition puts in his path? Not so long ago, James looked like a student taking an exam with all the answers written on the back of his hand. The effortlessness was unmissable. The inevitability of his success was almost boring. But LeBron isn’t the conductor he used to be.
This doesn’t mean other teams will be OK watching him back down a smaller opponent. James is still a walking mismatch, explosive and powerful. But during his peak he reigned supreme with his back to the basket, carving help coverages and bludgeoning individuals when no rotation came. Last season was different: James recorded an assist on only 9.0 percent of his direct postups. During the 2020 regular season, on his way to a fourth ring, that number was 21.3 percent. Even after the trade deadline, James generated only 0.87 points per direct play out of the post. Among all players who averaged at least three postups per game over that span, only Marvin Bagley III and James Wiseman were less efficient, according to Second Spectrum.
LeBron’s pick-and-rolls with AD were also mostly solved by defenses that switched the initial screen. They generated only .90 points per direct play, which ranked 74th out of 77 tandems that hooked up at least 150 times after the trade deadline.
Russell, Reaves, and Vincent can provide some on-ball relief, but if LeBron’s 3-point percentage doesn’t significantly bounce back from the 32.1 percent we saw in the regular season (it was a historically brutal 26.4 percent in the playoffs), it’ll exacerbate the Lakers’ spacing dilemma. (He also made only 36.1 percent of his midrange jumpers last season.) They went 18-9 after the trade deadline but still ranked only 22nd in half-court offensive rating, then generated just 112.7 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs—which would’ve ranked in the mid-20s if compared to regular-season marks. (They free-fell below 100.0 when Davis sat.)
There were issues on the other end, too. James isn’t a liability. He’s large, intimidating, and still (somehow) a chase-down block artist who’s hard to fool in a half-court set. In key spots he can keep his body between the ball and the basket and is still amazing at turning rebounds into fast breaks. But some elements are in a downturn.
Opponents blew by James on 41.9 percent of the drives he guarded. That was the second-highest number out of 310 players who registered at least 150 plays, per Second Spectrum. (Only Luka Doncic allowed them at a higher rate.) Some of that’s because he likes to gamble for steals, taking risky lunges that sometimes lead to pick-six rewards. James is also fine getting up into his man’s jersey when he knows Davis is behind him walling off the rim. But there were plenty of examples last year when it was difficult to separate poor effort from a lack of command:
The subtle slides on both ends speak to a great player at odds with a swelling inability to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. How wide those ripple effects will spread in 2024 is unknown, as is this team’s capacity to withstand them.
The Lakers finished 13-14 in games James missed last year, but critically went 8-5 from February 28 to March 24, when his foot pain was too harsh to play through. As L.A. struggled to score, it won with the league’s fourth-best defense and absolutely mauled opponents on both ends when Davis and Reaves shared the court.
Should something similar happen again—a reasonable expectation—is that success replicable? Are the Lakers resourceful enough to survive any of LeBron’s extended dips into “chill mode” or the in-season needs of a body that requires more and more time for recovery and preparation? There will be games when he simply can’t access tools that were once second nature. And, as was the case last year when James didn’t look right, rest is prioritized over practice.
The easy solution to all this is Davis. At media day, James declared him the face of their franchise. AD’s presence on both ends, as someone who’s only 30 years old and was named one of the NBA’s Top 75 players, should be enough to keep this team relevant, if not formidable. Davis spent the playoffs reminding people how dominant he can be. In 16 games he averaged 22.6 points, 14.1 rebounds, 3.1 blocks, and 1.4 steals. Opponents shot just 44.7 percent in the paint when he was the closest defender, a tiny number that speaks to how he single-handedly altered his opponents’ shot charts.
Davis might be the most imposing help defender in the league. When necessary, he can also switch a screen and dance on the perimeter against some of the sport’s most foreboding matchups:
The Lakers went 10-10 when Davis missed 20 games in the middle of last season, but they also had one of the worst defenses in the league. And unfortunately for L.A., lengthy absences are baked into the AD experience. In each season since he won the title, Davis has appeared in only 36, 40, and 56 games. He also has not made the last two All-Star teams while all but abandoning the 3-point line (Davis averaged a career-high 3.5 per game during his first season with the Lakers; last year it was 1.3). He still has All-NBA talent, but he isn’t the most dependable alternative if and when James can’t move like he wants to.
Should some type of upgrade be necessary before the trade deadline, the Lakers have movable contracts—Russell, Hachimura, Vincent—that can be attached to their 2029 first-round pick. Jerami Grant, a Klutch client, could be available if the Lakers are willing to take on his massive contract and Portland doesn’t receive any better offers. They could also make a run at Gordon Hayward’s expiring contract or old friend Kyle Kuzma. But based on how the Lakers look right now, in a conference that won’t allow any missteps, their ceiling might be a little lower than many believe it to be.
The tightrope in Los Angeles feels particularly treacherous. Every contender is worse off without one of its two best players on the court, but the conundrum is more worrisome for a team this reliant on an aging star, his injury-prone costar, and their relatively imbalanced rotation. Last year’s playoff run was probably closer to fool’s gold than the start of something special.
There’s always a scenario in which things fall into place: Davis looks like the MVP, LeBron hits more than 40 percent of his 3s, Reaves becomes a star, and some of the Lakers’ talented pieces who have no real track record of contributing toward a winning situation (Russell, Wood, Hachimura) do just that.
Coast through any segment of the season, and it’s easy to find yourself looking up at six or seven teams. But along with any apprehension about how they’ll fare in the regular season, whether they get through it intact or not, the Lakers are a rung below the Nuggets, do not match up well against the Suns, would have their hands full against the Warriors, and last beat the Clippers in 2021. The Kings, Timberwolves, Thunder, Grizzlies, and (healthy) Pelicans are not pushovers, either.
It’s tempting to believe in something just because you’ve seen it before. The Lakers won it all in 2020 with LeBron, Davis, a mediocre half-court offense, and a great defense. But that group is not this one. Betting on these Lakers feels like siding with mythology over precedent. The path to every title is treacherous and this one will be no different. Father Time, a roster packed with one-way players, and only two playoff series wins in the past three years may set L.A. up for disappointment in a way its competition doesn’t have to worry about.