Los Angeles Lakers: The all-time LeBron James teammate team
By Jason Reed
Small forward of the LeBron James all-time teammate team: Brandon Ingram (2018-19)
It might be surprising to see a Los Angeles Lakers teammate from the 2018 season on this list but throughout his career, LeBron James really has not played with that many traditional small forwards, because he is a small forward, of course.
We could have cheated and moved one of the several solid power forwards down to the three but none of them really fit small forward. We also could have moved someone such as Ray Allen or J.R. Smith from the two-guard to the three, but being a traditional three, Brandon Ingram gets the nod.
It is not like we are getting a bad version of Ingram either. We are not getting the all-star version that blossomed in New Orleans and is averaging 24.3 points per game, but we are getting the appetizer to that; an Ingram that started to show flashes of being that guy from time to time.
Ingram averaged 18.3 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game while shooting 49.7 percent from the field (and a career-low 33 percent from beyond the arc). It is not shown in his numbers this season, but aside from being a scoring threat, Ingram is actually really solid in a point forward role.
Ingram had some huge scoring outbursts with the Lakers in this season that should have given us the indication that he was ready to take that next step. He scored 30 or more three times and scored 20 or more in 20 of his 52 games.
In his six games after the All-Star Break, albeit a very small sample size, Ingram averaged 27.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists. Without LeBron James on the court, Ingram played like an all-star last year and LeBron wouldn’t be on the court on this team.