As the dust settles from what has been an absolutely insane offseason, it’s time to make a ‘way to early prediction’ and determine where the Los Angeles Lakers are in the Western Conference pecking order.
There are many factors that will inform this decision, such as roster construction, coaching, team chemistry, and front-office cohesion. As is the case with any prediction, there are a number of things that simply can’t be accounted for.
As it currently stands, the Los Angeles Lakers are squarely in the running as a Top-5 team in the West, with the other four teams being the Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets, Portland Trail Blazers and Houston Rockets. The Lakers simply have too much talent to fail, and the combination of LeBron James and Anthony Davis is a match made in heaven. But in looking at the rest of conference realistically, there are other teams that are above them in the food chain.
The Clippers are firmly the top-dog in the Western Conference; they signed the best available free-agent in Kawhi Leonard, and managed to pair him with a finalist for last season’s Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year in Paul George. The team is as deep as they are talented, as they essentially swapped Tobias Harris and Danilo Gallinari for those two while managing to keep a majority of their already successful roster intact.
However, with all of this talk of the two LA teams, many seem to be sleeping on the Denver Nuggets, who finished second in the Western Conference. The Nuggets have an incredibly young and talented team that still has tons of room to grow. Their two star talents in Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray are still only 24 and 23 respectively, and their other complementary pieces such as Gary Harris, Malik Beasley, Monte Morris, and the newly acquired Jerami Grant are all under the age of 25. The core of this team has remained together for a number of years already and have built an impressive chemistry that shows when they’re on the floor.
The Rockets are perhaps the biggest wild-card amongst this list teams since much of their success is riding on the James Harden/Russell Westbrook experiment. It’s a situation similar to the James Harden/Chris Paul experiment in that it can either go really good or really bad. But there’s reason to be optimistic about Houston, as Westbrook in an uptempo, Mike D’Antoni system, surrounded by shooters and lob threats should, at least on paper, be a recipe for success. Not to mention they still have Harden as a back-up plan.
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The Blazers are another team, where, like the Nuggets, they have continuity on their side, as the team is going into year five of the Damian Lillard/CJ McCollum era, and year eight of being led by coach Terry Stotts. These last two seasons have been this iteration of the team’s most successful, as they finished 3rd in the Western in each of those seasons and it’s not crazy to think this success could continue into the 2019-2020 season. The x-factor for this team will undoubtedly be the addition of Hassan Whiteside and if he can get back to his 2016-2017 form.
The Warriors are the obvious omission here, but with Klay Thompson still recovering from his ACL injury in the NBA Finals, the influx of new players and rookies into this team, and the fact that their cornerstones in Draymond Green and Stephen Curry are getting older, it’s hard to imagine this team finishing in the Top-4, even with the addition of an All-Star (in the East) in D’Angelo Russell.
So where does that leave the Lakers? First off, there will definitely be an adjustment period for this roster, since there will be nine new players on the team, coupled with the fact that the coaching staff has been essentially rebuilt from the ground-up.
The roster is also a bit of a weird fit, and will rely heavily on James to be the primary playmaker and initiator, a task which would’ve been a breeze four or five years ago, but LeBron will be entering this season at 35-years-old, and it’s unknown whether or not he can shoulder that burden like he’s done so many times in years past.
That alone puts them behind the Clippers, Rockets, and Nuggets who all have maintained some semblance of continuity either through coaching, roster, or both.
In addition, health will also be an issue with this Lakers team, as a number of potential impact players have dealt with injury this past season. LeBron James suffered his first major injury in his career in the form of a groin injury, DeMarcus Cousins is still working his way back from a torn quad, and a torn Achilles, and Anthony Davis always seems to have a nagging injury or two that keeps him out for 10-15 games a season.
However, the ceiling of this team puts them right up there with the Clippers in that top-2 range. If Cousins can get back to at least 80% of his pre-injury form, Davis catapults himself into the MVP conversation, and LeBron returns with a chip on his shoulder from missing the playoffs for the first time since 2005, then this team can absolutely be one of, if not the dominant force in the West.