Los Angeles Lakers O/U 52.5
This roster would have been the title favorites had they played together in 2013. Should they be the title favorites now?
What happened last season?
On October 11, 2020, the Lakers clinched and celebrated a championship like none other, removed from the outside world with a compressed schedule to salvage as much of the 2020-2021 season as possible. On December 22, 2020, the Lakers would begin their title defense on the first night of the season with the shortest offseason break in league history.
The Lakers lost their season opener against the Clippers but wouldn’t lose many more over the next eight weeks. On February 16 with about 40% of the season complete, the Lakers held the second-best record in the league (22-7) with a strong point differential of +7.1. Despite per game averages that would constitute a down-year for LeBron James, LeBron was in the MVP race, seemingly on cruise control. Although the point differential was strong, the Lakers picked up a habit of letting teams linger going into the fourth quarter. LeBron would then force his way to the basket, the defense would turn up to the levels of last playoffs, and the Lakers would prevail. The procrastination, however, left LeBron on the floor longer than necessary – not only was he averaging over 33 minutes per game, more than anyone age 35+ last season, he had also played in every single game to that point.
Some combination of fatigue and bad luck would befall the Lakers’ two stars. Anthony Davis, no stranger to the injury report, missed that February 16 game with an Achilles injury and would go on to miss the next 28 games. The Lakers went 6-6 over the next 12 games until a game against the Atlanta Hawks in which Solomon Hill rolled onto LeBron’s leg. LeBron would be forced to miss all but two games until the last two games of the season to (Looney) tune-up for the playoffs. Davis returned with a month left in the season but struggled a bit to acclimate himself with new frontcourt-mate Andre Drummond who took Marc Gasol’s spot as starting center.
The Lakers went 20-25 after the Davis injury and 14-19 after the LeBron injury. The Lakers nearly kept themselves from falling into the play-in game on the strength of their defense as they finished the season with best defensive efficiency after finishing third in the previous season. Kyle Kuzma particularly improved on that side of the floor and cranked up his rebound rate for a career high. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso continued to be two of the better yet unheralded perimeter defenders while Marc Gasol was a shot-deterrent in the paint. The Lakers simply couldn’t score without LeBron.
The Lakers, just an average offense prior to the LeBron injury, cratered to 29th in offensive efficiency afterward. Dennis Schroder was intended to be the player to lift some scoring responsibility off of LeBron but could not make up for the loss of both LeBron and Davis. 10 of the Lakers’ 15 lowest scoring outputs came after the LeBron injury.
Even before the injuries, the Lakers had a suboptimal offensive alignment next to LeBron. James teams have flourished with willing and capable shooters on the perimeter. Marc Gasol was one the most unwilling shooters in the league and Davis’ jumper abandoned him, particularly from three (26.0%). LeBron was arguably the best perimeter shooter on his own team, leading the Lakers with 6.3 three-point attempts per game at 36.5%. KCP, Caruso and Gasol just cleared the 40% mark as a group but on a mere 9 attempts per game. Ben McLemore was a late import to provide a credible threat.
The Lakers were subjected to the play-in tournament and entered the playoffs as a 7-seed. Another Davis injury in the first round would limit the Lakers after taking a 2-1 jump on the eventual Western Conference finalist Phoenix Suns. LeBron suddenly found himself surrounded with his weakest supporting cast in the playoffs since the 2015 NBA Finals. No other starter would notch double digit points in Game 4 or 5 and Anthony Davis quickly exited the elimination game that found the Lakers down 22 by the end of the first quarter.
What happened in the offseason?
The latter stages of the regular season and playoffs clearly resonated more with GM Rob Pelinka than its beginnings. LeBron will once again lead a Big 3 – in addition to Anthony Davis, he will have Russell Westbrook as a running mate. The Westbrook acquisition wiped out the top end Lakers’ role player rotation at once. Kuzma, KCP and Harrell, the outgoing players in the transaction, totaled over 5,400 minutes for the Lakers last season. Westbrook has mostly been an iron man throughout his career, failing to top 2,000 minutes in a season just once despite three shortened seasons. However, he has a history of knee issues and will at best make up half of those outgoing minutes.
Dennis Schroder, who led the team in minutes played, turned down a midseason extension offer to sign for pennies with the Boston Celtics. Alex Caruso and Markieff Morris, players that accumulated 1,200 minutes each last season, were also free agency losses. Starting center Marc Gasol was traded for luxury tax relief. Wes Matthews also departs along with midseason acquisitions Andre Drummond and Ben McLemore. In all, the Lakers lost ten of their top 13 rotation players. Besides Gasol, Matthews and Morris, the outgoing players are in the prime of their careers.
The incoming players are not. Westbrook is 33 with nearly 33,000 minutes on his legs. Carmelo Anthony is 37 with over 40,000 minutes logged. Dwight Howard and Trevor Ariza were drafted in 2004 and Rajon Rondo a year after that. DeAndre Jordan was also drafted in the 2000s decade. Wayne Ellington and Kent Bazemore are 3-and-not-a-lot-of-D specialists who are both slowing down at age 34 and 32 respectively. Guard additions Kendrick Nunn and Malik Monk are relative infants at age 26 and 23. There’s a lot of veteran know-how on the team but this team will be starting from scratch together with the lowest returning minutes in the league.
What will happen this season?
Projected Depth Chart and Minutes Distribution
LeBron James might be paired with his most willing shot creator ever in his career with Russell Westbrook on board. The only times LeBron played alongside a player that used over 30% of possessions was with Dwayne Wade in the first two Heat seasons and Kyrie Irving in the championship Cavs season. Despite playing alongside two of the greatest offensive players of all-time in Kevin Durant and James Harden (and also All-NBA players Paul George and Bradley Beal), Westbrook has not dipped below 30% usage in his last 11 seasons. I would not expect him to get shy around LeBron and Anthony Davis. Last season, Davis fell just shy of 30% usage; there was a large gap to the third highest on the team (Schroder, 22.9%). Like Chris Bosh and Kevin Love before him, I’d expect Davis’s usage to fall the most amongst the three.
The Lakers ranked in the bottom 10 in three-point frequency and accuracy, a miserable combination considering that LeBron James was setting up his teammates. The Lakers corrected this deficiency by acquiring more willing and accurate marksmen. Tallying the per game numbers from the outgoing players versus the incoming ones, we see an appreciable uptick in three-point shooting.
However, one of those incoming players is Westbrook. He’s still willing to fire away with over 4 attempts per game despite barely clearing the 30% mark, which somehow was an improvement over the previous season. Westbrook will be invited to shoot while his defender keeps a foot in the paint on possessions when LeBron conducts the offense. Davis, like Bosh and Love before him, will be predictably pushed out to the three-point line to make up for the lack of spacing that Westbrook cannot provide. Davis’s career high three-point percentage is 34%. The next logical step will be to slide Davis up to the 5 to get more shooters at the wing.
While the incoming players are better shooters, they are much worse defenders. If the Lakers finish in the top three in defensive efficiency for a third straight year, hand the Coach of the Year trophy to Frank Vogel immediately upon the season’s conclusion. Westbrook is at least capable of being disruptive, jumping passing lanes and fast enough to fly around for rotations. Ariza might be in the 3-and-D Hall of Fame and remains an effective defender. Everyone else incoming is a downgrade. Rondo’s reputation for being a positive on defense is currently long gone. Dwight Howard is now as hacky on the floor as he is off of it – he led the NBA in foul rate last season (0.17 fouls/min). Carmelo Anthony is toast against most 4s these days. Malik Monk may not last a season longer in the league because he’s so bad on defense. Bazemore and Ellington are far from imposing defenders but are at least smart and willing.
Howard and Jordan are mostly redundant players that probably cannot play alongside the Lakers’ Big 3. In crunch time and in the playoffs, Davis will find himself at 5.
Talen Horton-Tucker is the lone player on the roster with potential to make a leap. Unfortunately, his promise will be deferred as he’ll spend the first few weeks sidelined as he recovers from surgery to his thumb. Fellow wing Trevor Ariza will also start the season recovering from a medical procedure to his ankle.
The projection
This is not a bet against LeBron James. Even at age 37 he’s expected to play at MVP-worthy levels yet again. This is a bet against his circumstances.
Westbrook will be the most ill-fitting pairing along LeBron since Dwayne Wade. Westbrook’s game is incredibly dependent on his athleticism, and he comes in with knee surgeries and a lot of tread on his legs. He’s one of the worst three-point shooters of all-time and will force the Lakers to prioritize shooting at the other two positions to make the offense work around the Big 3.
The Lakers have suffocated teams since Vogel and Davis were imported to the team. Vogel inherited a young-ish, athletic team that he maximized to league-best levels over the last two seasons. Caruso, Pope, and Schroder all received All-Defensive Team votes and all three are gone. They’re replaced with old, slow legs. The most capable of the incoming players are average at best on defense and the worst ones are walking targets for opponents.
Games missed will be common for this team with an average age of 33. Most of the players on the current roster played into June so their time for offseason conditioning was shorter. Two of LeBron’s last three years saw him sidelined for a sizable portion of the season. Anthony Davis is more Tin Man than Ironman. Westbrook’s style of play makes him perpetually prone to injury.
The Lakers will also have lack of continuity to overcome. In all, this feels like the 2018-2019 Cavs season in which non-shooting, defensively weakened veterans were miscast next to LeBron. That Cavs team finished with less than 50 wins. I expect the same outcome for this one.