The Los Angeles Lakers' final possession on Tuesday night in a loss to the Orlando Magic was a symbol of their ongoing chemistry issues.
Luka Doncic passed up a good look that he normally takes and then hot potato'd the basketball over to a completely confused LeBron James, who improvised as best he could with a fadeaway jumper that caught only iron as time expired.
It was a moment of poor execution that was largely Luka's fault, but it nonetheless opened up media discourse about Doncic and James's flawed pairing.
Tim MacMahon calls out poor chemistry between Luka Doncic, LeBron James
ESPN's Tim MacMahon joined this discussion on Wednesday, asserting that Luka "has not developed any kind of chemistry with LeBron James" over the past calendar year.
MacMahon also called Luka and LeBron an "awkward fit" and pointed out a painful, sobering stat for Lakers fans: Los Angeles is minus-82 this season when Doncic and James are on the floor together (747 total minutes), which represents the worst plus/minus of any Lakers duo!
So, is MacMahon onto something, or are the Lakers, as JJ Redick framed on Tuesday night after the loss, still just a work in progress that will fix itself in due time?
For the answer, consider how the Lakers' front office envisions its future past the current season. President of basketball operations Rob Pelinka and Co. haven't prioritized the retention of LeBron past 2025-26.
MacMahon's right, and Pelinka knows it. So do scores of Lakers fans. LeBron and Luka are too similar as players for the pairing to reap championship-type rewards, at least at this point in their respective careers.
And it's not like Pelinka contemplated and masterfully orchestrated a LeBron-Luka duo; remember -- Doncic fell into Pelinka's lap when Nico Harrison decided to lose his mind and ruin the Dallas Mavericks.
There were plenty of doubts right away about a LeBron-Luka fit, for obvious reasons, and sadly, the superstar duo hasn't done nearly enough to disprove those suspicions over the past year.
The Lakers have plenty of other issues that are more pressing than LeBron and Luka, and MacMahon might be overselling the fit as more disastrous than it actually is, but no one would be able to argue that this has been an artful or winning fusion of talent.
Lakers fans dreamed that the two megastars would be able to sort things out based on their sky-high basketball IQs, and that's happened to a large extent. But the rest of the West is simply too good for the Lakers to get away with being a work in progress, and time is running out.