https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/2/8/ ... -questions
Are the Lakers Now Officially Wasting a LeBron Year?
The stakes for the Lakers heading into Thursday’s deadline were very clear, and everybody knew them. Getting Anthony Davis meant success; not getting him meant failure. There’s no way around it: The Lakers failed on Thursday. Massively, spectacularly, and very publicly.
The players they did land via trade, swingman Reggie Bullock and reserve big Mike Muscala, should help, because LeBron James teams should always have as many capable 3-point shooters as possible. No brownie points for Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka there, though; that’s something the Lakers should’ve known after watching James make eight straight Finals while flanked by marksmen in Miami and Cleveland. Yet they consciously zagged after landing James last summer, preferring instead to surround him with playmaking ball handlers who have iffy jumpers.
The result: L.A. enters Friday ranked 20th in 3-point makes per game, 19th in long balls attempted per game, 27th in team 3-point percentage, and 21st in overall offensive efficiency. A groin strain that cost James 18 games—already a career high, with more than eight weeks remaining in the regular season—has certainly depressed those numbers. Even when he’s been in the lineup, though, the Lakers have lagged previous James teams when it comes to creating and canning quality shots when they’re not working in transition. They’ve averaged just 92.3 points per 100 half-court plays with LeBron on the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass, which puts the Lakers in the 42nd percentile in half-court execution this season—the lowest mark for a LeBron team since his rookie season, all the way back in 2003-04.
Missing on a world-breaking talent like Davis means the Lakers head into the home stretch with, essentially, the same roster that has produced a bottom-third offense and a barely-.500 record. Maybe a full final two months from James, the additions of Bullock and Muscala, an eventual healthy return by Lonzo Ball (who, in case you hadn’t heard, ain’t goin’ nowhere), and the draining of the abscess created by hanging a “For Sale” sign on virtually every Laker will combine to spark a big run deep into the postseason. But the bet here is that it won’t be enough. Not even close.
As great a difference as LeBron makes through his sheer presence—that was a 28-12-12 triple-double in a one-point win in Boston on Thursday night, if you’re keeping score—he can’t just will his team through the gantlet this time around, because this isn’t last season’s Eastern Conference. The Lakers will have to grind just to leapfrog the Clippers and Kings to get into the postseason; according to multiple projection systems, they’re not even a coin-flip bet to crack the top eight right now. Even if they do get in, if they can’t climb up over the no. 8 seed, they’ll be little more than an amuse-bouche for the all-devouring Warriors. And if this season amounts to nothing more than a first-round washout—or, shock horror, a sixth-straight spring without playoff basketball—well, then the Lakers will have just squandered one of the most productive age-34 seasons ever, banked their hopes of a brighter tomorrow on landing another superstar in a summer when that’s far from a sure thing, and rolled the whole thing over to rest on the age-35 season of a player who will have more total miles on his NBA odometer than all but a few players in league history.
