Los Angeles Lakers who have played better with LeBron James injured

3. Markieff Morris

Markieff Morris is ironically on the list of players that have made the most of LeBron James being hurt as well as our list of players that will see their playing time reduced the most once the team gets healthy.

Morris has been playing well in the last 13 games and is getting a lot of playing time with the injuries. With LeBron and AD both being forwards, with the addition of Andre Drummond, it is clear that his playing time will go down once the team has a full rotation.

Morris started the 2020-21 season on a terrible foot. He was playing extremely inefficiently to start the year and looked as if he was going to play his way out of the playoff rotation by season’s end. However, he has turned it around and will get a role in the playoff role, even if it is smaller than his current role.

Morris has played 12 of the 13 games without LeBron and is averaging 12 points per game. His BPM is not great as he does not do as much offensively and is not a great defender but he has filled in nicely in his role as an off-ball shooter.

Morris is third on the team in three-point shots made and is shooting 39.3% from beyond the arc. His true shooting percentage of 60.1% is second on the team in this span behind only Marc Gasol.

Honorable mention: Alex Caruso

Alex Caruso has looked solid in these 13 games and he definitely deserves to be mentioned in this article. However, I did not include him as one of the players as he is simply doing what he always does. Caruso is one of the most underappreciated players in the league, even if he is hyped on social media.

He is playing the same defense that he always does with the same hustle. He has benefitted in the sense that more people are paying attention to him, but that is it.

He is also shooting the three-ball at a 48.4% clip. However, it is not like Caruso is jacking up a lot of threes, as he is averaging 2.4 three-point attempts per game.