Los Angeles Lakers: Comparing each position in 2019-2020 to last season

Center

2018-2019 C Depth Chart: JaVale McGee, Ivica Zubac, Moritz Wagner

2019-2020 C Depth Chart: JaVale McGee, Dwight Howard

The center position was a major issue last season for the Lakers and with the signing of DeMarcus Cousins and the retention of JaVale McGee, those worries seemed to be put to rest. However, Cousins suffered a torn ACL during a scrimmage and the Lakers had to quickly scramble to find a replacement.

Former Laker Dwight Howard emerged as the player the Lakers chose to sign, providing a somewhat quick fix to an unexpected injury. Even without Cousins and the acquisition of Howard, I still like this center rotation compared to last season’s.

Namely because the only serviceable center on the roster last season was JaVale McGee, whose effectiveness as a center starts to wane after 20 minutes of playing time. It also didn’t help that the team traded promising young center Ivica Zubac at the trade deadline.

But with Dwight in the fold, the center minutes can now be reasonably divided amongst McGee, Howard, and Davis. McGee will most likely be the starting center on opening night, but will return to a role similar to the one in Golden State, where he’ll get the Keith Bogans (a term borrowed from the Dunc’d On Podcast) meaning he’ll get subbed out before the end of the first quarter and play spot-minutes the rest of the game.

I don’t like that McGee and Howard’s skillsets overlap as both are athletic, rim-running types of players, as well as not having a reliable jump shot. But there is so much shooting at the other four positions that it should prove to not be as big of a problem.

I do think that having a floor-spacer at the center position would be huge for this team as it would open up the lanes for Davis and James to operate, similar to the effect Brook Lopez had on Giannis’ offense last season with the Bucks, but again, we’ll have to wait and see if any buy-out candidates meet that criteria.

As it stands, even with the Boogie injury, this season’s Center rotation is shaping up to be an improvement over last seasons.