Los Angeles Lakers 2024-25 season preview: LeBron James, Father Time and a loaded West
The 2024-25 NBA season is right here! We’re breaking down the largest questions, best- and worst-case eventualities, and fantasy outlooks for all 30 groups. Take pleasure in!
LOS ANGELES LAKERS
2023-24 end
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Report: 47-35 (misplaced within the first spherical to the Nuggets, however additionally they received the in-season match, so, y’know: not all unhealthy)
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Offensive score: 115.4 (fifteenth)
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Defensive score: 114.8 (seventeenth)
Offseason strikes
The Large Query: Can LeBron + AD nonetheless offer you an opportunity?
Two seasons in the past, the Lakers’ fortunes turned after they ended the Russell Westbrook experiment in favor of surrounding LeBron James and Anthony Davis with extra gamers who may shoot and defend. (Which, you may recall, is how they received the 2020 NBA championship.) The end result: an 18-9 near the common season, a top-seven level differential in that span, and playoff victories over the Grizzlies and Warriors earlier than shedding to the Nuggets.
Final season, after sputtering at .500 on Feb. 1, their fortunes began to show when Ham surrounded James and Davis with Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura — three gamers who may shoot and (kinda) defend. The end result: a 22-10 shut, the league’s No. 3 offense, and a play-in victory over the Pelicans earlier than, um, shedding to the Nuggets.
We all know this a lot: First-time head coach Redick received’t wait 50 video games to lean into what works, intending to start out that lineup from Leap Avenue. For good cause: LeBron-AD-Reaves-Russell-Hachimura outscored opponents by 6.9 factors per 100 possessions final season, scoring at a top-three clip whereas defending like a top-seven unit. The lineup replicated that success within the playoffs, too, outscoring Denver by 14 factors in its 96 minutes.
A lineup that includes a number of plus shooters and ball-handlers to lighten LeBron’s playmaking load that may leverage nice positional measurement on protection whereas pounding the paint on offense — L.A. completed second within the NBA within the share of its pictures that got here on the rim, first in field-goal share on the rim, and second in free-throw charge — is a good place to begin. Assume again to how outstanding James seemed quarterbacking Crew USA, and the way dominant Davis seemed defensively, and your thoughts begins tracing the define of one other title push.
“To go on the market at my age, with the miles that I’ve, and to have the ability to play on the degree I performed at, it gave me … much more of a way of, ‘OK, I do have rather a lot within the tank — rather a lot,’” James instructed reporters on media day. “I might help a giant a part of a crew win the last word, [whether] it’s gold or a Larry O’Brien Trophy or regardless of the case could also be. I can nonetheless get it finished.”
One nettlesome subject: The Lakers’ second unit doesn’t function Kevin Durant, Anthony Edwards and Bam Adebayo.
This yr’s roster largely resembles its predecessor — the pure outgrowth of a summer time spent in a staring contest with the apron after Russell, a very important regular-season bellwether and postseason millstone, picked up his $18.7 million participant choice. Salvation, then, should come from inside: from the interior improvement of kids like Max Christie and Jalen Hood-Schifino; from the hopefully salutary results of continuity; and from Redick plucking no matter low-hanging fruit he can find.
First on the record: Stand up manner extra 3-pointers. If the longtime NBA marksman has his druthers, the Lakers received’t be ending twenty seventh and twenty eighth in 3-point try charge anymore. (Enter first-round decide Knecht, who shot 40% from distance at Tennessee final season whereas taking greater than 12 triples per 100 possessions.)
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One other potential pluck? Tilting the possession recreation. L.A. completed final season twenty ninth in offensive rebounding charge and useless final in second-chance factors; a schematic shift towards extra opportunistic crashing may pay dividends. (A wholesome Jarred Vanderbilt may assist. He’s nonetheless recuperating from a number of offseason foot surgical procedures; his return date stays unsure.)
There’s a model of the Lakers that fields a top-flight beginning 5, will get development from its younger items and higher well being from its complementary vets, extracts extra productiveness on the margins, and will get top-10 performances from its franchise cornerstones. That, as Hachimura mentioned firstly of camp, “is a crew that may win the entire thing.”
It’s additionally an awfully optimistic view. Which, maybe, is why the game’s elder statesman struck a extra sober be aware.
“I don’t have any expectations,” James mentioned. “And that is unfair to place any expectations on us proper now. The one factor that we will rely on one another is how we come to follow and are available to work daily.”
Finest-case situation
Redick injects newfound creativity and stability, leading to a roster able to being greater than merely the sum of its components. An “empowered” AD lastly will get his Defensive Participant of the 12 months due and lands again on the MVP poll. After an up-and-down encore to his breakthrough season, Reaves turns into a constant 20-point scorer and high-efficiency pick-and-roll playmaker, incomes All-Star consideration. Russell both balls out in his contract yr or turns into the matching-salary ballast that enables normal supervisor Rob Pelinka — who just lately mentioned he’s open to placing the crew’s 2029 and 2031 first-round picks on the desk in a deal he felt would assist safe “sustained Laker excellence” — to tug the set off on one thing massive. The wager pays off. The Lakers high 50 wins for the primary time because the bubble title. And LeBron and AD get one other shot to show their partnership’s nonetheless potent sufficient to get to the promised land.
If every little thing falls aside
Father Time lastly comes for LeBron, and Davis can’t elevate his recreation sufficient to compensate. Russell, Reaves and Rui stagnate; the kids don’t pop; Vando and Gabe Vincent won’t prevent. Pelinka takes a take a look at one other underwhelming roster 30-plus video games in and decides that discretion is the higher a part of valor, preferring to not throw good draft picks after unhealthy. Redick needs he’d simply stored calling video games with Doris and podcasting with Nekias and Steve, as his best-laid plans are dashed upon the rocks of the twin realities of a roster that doesn’t have sufficient expertise and a Western Convention that has tons.
Fantasy spin
Has Redick already remodeled the Lakers right into a fantasy-friendly crew? It appears to be like that manner, as their beginning unit appears to be like rejuvenated and motivated beneath Redick’s offensive schemes. Redick additionally admitted he desires to run a nine-man rotation, but it surely may get all the way down to eight typically.
Davis will price a mid-first-round decide, whereas the oldest participant within the league, LeBron James, is holding it down as a late-second, early-third-round decide. I would count on each to go earlier than the mid-second spherical for factors leagues.
Russell’s ADP is trending to a decent worth within the seventh spherical. Reaves, nonetheless, is trending down regardless of coming off a profession yr. His ADP could also be mispriced at 86th total. Hachimura isn’t a must-roster participant and it will take an harm for Christie to get off waivers. — Dan Titus
2024-25 schedule
The Lakers received 47 final season with LeBron and AD lacking simply 17 video games complete, their fewest because the bubble title, and mixing to play greater than 5,200 minutes, by far essentially the most of their shared L.A. tenure. Which appears extra possible: that well being, availability and productiveness persevering with, or at the least a slight dip from one if not each of them? The latter, I believe — which, in a more durable convention top-to-bottom, looks like a superb cause to go beneath.
