1. Will LeBron James be able to handle the increased load?
If this question had been asked a month ago, the answer to this question would’ve been an emphatic ‘yes’. Despite being in the seventeenth year of his illustrious career, LeBron James is still a top-five player in the game. Giving James and his thirty-five-year-old body a four-month intra-season break would, under ordinary circumstances, be a massive win for the Lakers.
However, in the past month, two events have occurred that could potentially change the answer to this question.
Lakers guard Avery Bradley drops out of NBA Orlando bubble plan over son’s health risks https://t.co/OwaTZzGeOH @dpyoung13
— NY Daily News Sports (@NYDNSports) June 24, 2020
ESPN story with @mcten on Lakers guard Rajon Rondo suffering a “significant” hand injury during Sunday’s practice: https://t.co/553j4TiNXu
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) July 13, 2020
Losing the top two point-guards in the rotation, one for the remainder of the season and the other for an extended period changes everything.
Several comments on social media are accurately pointing out that LeBron is the de facto point guard for the team. For the 2019-20 season to date, LeBron has spent approximately 57% of his time playing point guard on offense, en route to leading the NBA in assists.
However, the defensive end is a different story. To date, LeBron has guarded opposing point guards only 11.8% of his time on the court, the second-least time he’s spent guarding any position. Conversely, Avery Bradley had spent 40.8% of his time on-court guarding opposing point guards, and Rajon Rondo had spent 29.8%.
With the Lakers’ two primary point-guard defenders sidelined for the foreseeable future, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Frank Vogel task the ultra-versatile LeBron with the responsibility moving forward.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is the other likely candidate for the task, having already spent slightly over 20% of his time on-court guarding point guards. I believe that as a means of conserving James’ energy for offense, he should be the primary defender of point guards moving forward. However, despite his reputation as a lockdown defender, for the season KCP’s defensive advanced stats are average to below-average across the board.
Coupled with the fact that throughout his coaching career, Vogel has shown a preference for leaning on dependable veterans where possible, I believe that LeBron will see the largest increase in minutes spent defending opposing point guards.
While I don’t doubt that LeBron is capable of the task, being asked to potentially guard Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook, and Ja Morant at the same time as orchestrating and igniting the offense, is asking a lot of a thirty-five-year-old. Even one as good as LeBron.
If James ends up being asked to fight through a myriad of pick-and-roll screens and chase smaller, younger, uber-athletic point guards around the court, I’m curious as to whether he’s able to continue to run the offense at an MVP-caliber level like he normally does.