Should the Los Angeles Lakers start a new rebuild?
Ever since LeBron James left his hometown team for the second time to join the Los Angeles Lakers, they have only made it past the first round once and missed the playoffs/play in tournament twice. Even with future Hall of Famers Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook on the roster, the Lakers just continue to fall short of their lofty expectations.
While injuries have plagued the team during the James era in L.A., they continue to make questionable or downright bad moves in free agency or on the trade market, limiting how far they can go in the post season. This raises the question of whether or not the Lakers should just cut their losses and trade their players while they still have significant trade value and try to build from the bottom once again.
Even though they have continuously moved young players and draft capital in search of another All-Star to put next to their star big men, this has yet to work out for them, or any team that has tried this before, like the Lakers and Nets ten years ago.
LeBron James and Anthony Davis still hold a lot of value as trade assets, making them incredibly useful if the team decides to go that route. Unfortunately, other players on the team don’t have that same value, especially following the incredibly disappointing 2021-22 season where the team never got anything going even when fully healthy.
How the Los Angeles Lakers could approach a new rebuild
The Los Angeles Lakers could move James and Davis for a hefty sum of first round picks and young talent to build around pretty easily. We all saw what the Utah Jazz got from the Rudy Gobert trade.
With James nearing 40 years old and Davis approaching 30 while being one of the most injury prone players in the league, keeping these two together long term seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
The only real downside to rebuilding is the lack of competing for a championship and with how stacked the NBA as a whole is right now, it might not be the right time to force a window open just yet.
They would be held back by their lack of draft picks, but that didn’t slow down the Nets, a team that had none of their own first round picks for what felt like forever but still managed to build a winning team before blowing it all up for star power.
Blowing it all up and starting over is not always a bad thing. It just means having a few losing seasons and finding future stars to build a roster around.
The Los Angeles Lakers may not have a choice on whether or not to rebuild soon as LeBron James slows down and Anthony Davis continues to be sidelined with injuries. Why not start early?
This may be difficult for fans, but every team goes through it at some point. It’s part of the winning cycle. Good leadership paired with good decisions will get the franchise back to winning championships sooner rather than later.