When LeBron James, Luka Doncic, and Austin Reaves all share the floor, the Los Angeles Lakers are not at their best. We've known this for most of the season — but with just about a month remaining in the regular season, the trio has a minus-1.1 net rating when it shares the court together.
Meanwhile, when it's just Reaves and Doncic out there, the net rating is plus-6.8. There are a few asterisks included there, and two-player lineups are often hard to judge on their own, considering there are three other players out there.
Unsurprisingly, the consensus around the NBA is that these three guys can't coexist because of defensive struggles (or lack of effort). Tim Bontemps of ESPN said as much on a recent episode of The Hoop Collective Podcast:
Let's just be honest... The reason those three guys don't fit together is none of them, at this point, play much defense. And you can sort of get away with having two guys who aren't gonna guard. It's hard with two, it's almost impossible with three..."
That doesn't sound radical. And based on eye test alone, it feels like a safe assumption. But so far, the data doesn't really back that up. Non-five-player lineup data is never an exact science, so keep that in mind, but in the 316 minutes LA's Big 3 have played together, it's their 109.4 offensive rating that stands out. That mark would rank 29th in the NBA. Meanwhile, the team's defensive rating of 110.5 with all three on the court would be a top-five mark in the league.
Lakers' Big 3 doesn't have one clear issue
I am not trying to gaslight you into thinking the Lakers' Big 3 is actually good on defense. With a larger sample size, I'm sure those numbers would start to flip because none of these three do play good enough defense in 2026. But we're almost halfway through March now, so we have to take any sample size we have — and the sample shows that the offense is more stagnant than the defense is porous when these three are playing together. Basically, there isn't one glaring problem.
That might be the biggest problem of all. Our brains say defense should be the problem, but the data, right now, says the offense is stagnant when these guys share the court. Whatever the case may be, the trio doesn't work. That doesn't mean JJ Redick can fully move away from it (which of these guys would even hypothetically come off the bench?) but forcing this lineup combo is starting to feel like a fruitless endeavor.
In the meantime, though, the Lakers defense overall is actually improving — No. 12 in the league in DRTG over the past 15 games. That's something!