LeBron James suffered a high ankle sprain on March 20 against the Atlanta Hawks and the Los Angeles Lakers have played 13 games without James. Anthony Davis has been out since Valentine’s Day, so the Lakers have been without their two star players.
We have talked about the players who have struggled without LeBron James as well as the players who are going to get less playing time once the team gets healthy. Today, we look at the positive side of the coin: those players who have stepped up in the 13 games without LeBron James.
The team results have not been as good as we would have hoped for but we have seen some promising play from certain players. Let’s get into who has looked the best.
Los Angeles Lakers who have played the best without LeBron James:
1. Marc Gasol
Yes, you read that right. Marc Gasol has been one of the most disappointing players on the Los Angeles Lakers thus far this season, so much so that the team had to go out and sign Andre Drummond.
Gasol has played in eight of the 13 games without LeBron and has been really solid in those games. His workload and role on the team have gone down with Drummond and it has been a good thing for Gasol.
Gasol is shooting much more efficiently and is playing the best basketball that he has all season. Using Sports-Reference’s Stathead tool, we can see that Marc Gasol actually has the best Box Plus/Minus on the entire team since LeBron got hurt.