If anyone thought the Lakers wouldn’t miss LeBron James all that much after that season opener, certainly, no one feels that way.
The Lakers played poorly all around against the Warriors and had long stretches
where they couldn’t put the ball in the basket.
While one of the clearest examples was the third quarter start, where only Luka Dončić could score, head coach JJ Redick mentioned a moment in the first half when he wished LeBron was on the floor.
“It’s hard to forget about LeBron,” Redick said after the loss. “The reality is, when you’re focused on the group that you have, you got to make that group work. Sometimes you can just be like, ‘Oh! Oh my God! We’re going to get LeBron back at some point.’ Like it’s awesome, but you are focused. I’ll be honest with you, I did have one moment in that first half when we had a few possessions where we couldn’t score against the zone, I thought, ‘It’d be great to have LeBron just to throw it to the high post.’”
Life without LeBron won’t be easy for Los Angeles. He’s an All-NBA player, the league’s all-time scorer and still has enough gravity to space the floor for shooters, allowing for wide-open opportunities for his teammates.
During media day, LeBron even discussed how he could be even more of a help with the Lakers off-ball. James mentioned working on his catch-and-shoot threes so that Luka and Austin Reaves could get their ball-handling work done. Now, we’re going to have to wait a while before we get to see these things in action.
LeBron is dealing with a sciatica issue, and the current expectation is that he will be able to suit up for a Lakers game around mid-November.
The good news is that when he returns, James will be a massive boost to the team and can help them tremendously in all phases of the game, including how to break up a zone.
For now, though, Redick has to adjust to this temporary new normal and figure out how to get enough offense and be respectable on defense so they can stack wins during Bron’s absence.
That way, when LeBron does come back, he can just join what’s happening and it doesn’t feel like he has to be elite immediately because the Lakers are already falling behind the rest of the Western Conference.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
