For the third straight season, the Los Angeles Lakers are the best bet as at least Western Conference Champions for this upcoming year. However, with plenty of mileage and brittle key players littered through the roster, this season brings the most question marks and uncertainty in terms of the team’s ability to sustain success for sure.
Having said that, this team is obviously filled with household names and guys who have had real success in this league for many years. Starting with the dynamic, powerful new big three of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and newly ushered in Laker Russell Westbrook. All top-flight NBA superstars, but all have a major chip on their shoulder in the face of plenty of doubt league-wide.
With debate running rampant around the association as to weather this historic mix of players can put it together for a title, I figured it was more than appropriate to rank the Lake Show’s top players up against the league’s very best for the upcoming season. Starting of course with the self-proclaimed “Washed King.”
The Los Angeles Lakers’ big three rankings among NBA peers:
LeBron James: 2nd
Up until this past postseason, which was wild to say the least, I’ve been on the record on here calling the “King of Akron” LeBron James the best player on planet earth since 2006-2007. Astonishing. However, during Kawhi Leonard’s historic 2019 run while Lebron’s Lakers missed the playoffs in his first year, it looked like he had taken advantage of the King’s rare absence from the postseason enough to catapult him ahead to one.
Yes, LeBron had a mediocre Lakers roster for LeBron led-team-standards in fourth place in the west before a groin injury kept him sidelined through most of the rest of that season. Very impressive. However, up north in Toronto a Jordan-esque postseason in terms of two way impact and willing a team through the playoffs was being put on by Kawhi.
But alas, the following season took place. The long-anticipated battle of LA crumbled with a grand Clipper Collapse and Kawhi at the helm of it all with a total no show in game 7. And so, myself and many others had to apologize and felt silly putting the quiet Kawhi Leonard ahead of the King.
Still in all, looking back at that time, the defensive cushion Kawhi had created for himself versus LeBron coupled with his mesmerizing playmaking and scoring repertoire improvement, it really looked as if Kawhi had the throne in his overwhelming grasp.
Well, here I am again two years later and I have to now put the Brooklyn Nets Kevin Durant ever-so-slightly ahead of LeBron as the best player in the world. Now, LeBron stans have a reasonable path to an argument for Lebron at one, as they have for a decade and a half. Like Kawhi, LeBron obviously has the playmaking, leadership, and elevating others advantage.
However, considering the argument for KD as the most unstoppable, greatest scorer of all time is one to be had. And, considering how much he rounded out his game in terms of passing, rim protection and overall team defense in the Bay with the Warriors, he’s essentially become a completely broken 2K player at this point, as we saw again these playoffs.
He’s completely confident and unphased by the talk too on top of it despite his trigger-happy Twitter fingers off the court, there’s little to no hope for opposing teams.
Meanwhile, though LeBron is still obviously a top two player league-wide, after another tough lower-body injury, it was clear that he couldn’t carry the scoring load when the Lakers needed him to, like we had seen him do to pull his Cleveland Cavaliers out of quicksand many times.
Though his sizable jump-shooting improvement is worth noting. But overall, even LeBron had to succumb to age attrition a bit at some point and we’re seeing a slight chink in the armor. But, with a dynamic new point guard that we’ll get to later, who can take some of the responsibility off LeBron’s shoulders, we may see a recharged, revitalized LeBron ready to reclaim and cling to the league’s top spot as this ensuing season starts.