{"id":651212,"date":"2026-03-10T17:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/651212\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T17:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:00:20","slug":"luka-doncic-lebron-james-and-the-tale-of-two-lakers-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/651212\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Don\u010di\u0107, LeBron James and the tale of two Lakers teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are only 20 NBA players averaging more than 20 points and five assists per game<\/a>, and Team A is the only one in the league that employs three of them. This team has the best record<\/a> and offensive rating<\/a>, and second-best net rating<\/a>, in games where the score was within five points in the final five minutes; it has been arguably the best crunch-time squad in the NBA. This team is on pace for 50 wins and sits just a game out of third place in its conference, led by an MVP candidate, one of the greatest players of all time, and an ascendant offensive star poised to receive a massive new deal as soon as this summer.<\/p>\n

And then, there\u2019s Team B.<\/p>\n

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Team B has fielded a bottom-10 defense<\/a> virtually all season, and actually defends worse, like a near-bottom-five unit, with its starting center on the floor<\/a>. This team is 16-20 against .500-or-better teams<\/a>, including a 7-13 mark against opponents currently positioned in the top six in either conference. It has the worst point differential of any top-six team<\/a> \u2014 actually, up until about a week and a half ago, it had been outscored over the course of the full season \u2014 and has been a net-negative with its three best players on the floor<\/a> together \u2026 which helps explain why it\u2019s just two games clear of dropping into the play-in tournament.<\/p>\n

Team A sounds like a contender. Team B sounds like an also-ran.<\/p>\n

\"Feb<\/p>\n

Feb 26, 2026; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) with guard Luka Doncic (77) and guard Austin Reaves (15) against the Phoenix Suns at Mortgage Matchup Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect \/ REUTERS)<\/p>\n

The thing is \u2014 if you haven\u2019t already figured out my clever ruse \u2014 they\u2019re actually the same team.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think when we play good \u2014 like, really good \u2014 we [are] looking like a championship team, you know,\u201d Los Angeles Lakers forward Rui Hachimura recently told reporters<\/a>. \u201cBut when we [are] not \u2014 like, we have a lot of time that we [are] not \u2014 then we look like we\u2019re just literally [an] out-of-a-playoff team.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Somebody give that man a column.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s been kind of the story of the season, really, for the Lakers, who enter Tuesday\u2019s meeting with the rival Minnesota Timberwolves in the thick of the Western Conference playoff chase: the understandable yet unavoidable degree to which they\u2019re two teams. They\u2019re navigating the precarious now, an interregnum between what has been and what will be.<\/p>\n

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Off the court, the ever-roiling internecine drama of the Buss family<\/a> has begun to give way to investment-firm billionaire Mark Walters<\/a>\u2019 efforts to turn forum blue and gold<\/a> into something a little more blue and white<\/a>. On it, the franchise continues its transition from an era revolving around LeBron James \u2014 one of the greatest players in the history of the sport and the driving force behind the Lakers\u2019 most recent NBA championship, and also the central figure in what\u2019s been, all things considered, a fairly tumultuous eight years<\/a> \u2014 to another revolving around handpicked standard-bearer Luka Don\u010di\u0107 (and, potentially, Austin Reaves).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a somewhat fitful shift, as the organization and its signature stars have sought to manage what James\u2019 longtime agent Rich Paul famously called<\/a> \u201cthe difficulty in winning now while preparing for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When James missed the first 14 games of the season dealing with a sciatica issue, the Lakers went 10-4, with Don\u010di\u0107 quickly establishing himself as an MVP candidate<\/a> and Reaves making it clear<\/a> that he was ticketed for a bigger role and a bigger payday in the not-too-distant future. The winning continued once James returned: L.A. went 13-7 in the first 20 games following his season debut, with LeBron continuing to hold Father Time at arm\u2019s length, averaging<\/a> nearly 22 points and seven assists per game on 51% shooting as he blew past his 41st birthday into the new year.<\/p>\n

But while the overall record and individual statistics looked great, the fundamentals of how the team operated left much to be desired. An underwhelming .500 stretch heading into the All-Star break featured blowouts by the Spurs, Cavaliers and Hornets, double-digit defeats at the hands of the Knicks, Kings and Trail Blazers, and a loss to the defending champion Thunder after which James made plain<\/a> what he was as the difference between L.A. and OKC: \u201cThat\u2019s a championship team right there. We\u2019re not. We can\u2019t sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A rotation light on point-of-attack stoppers<\/a>, wing defenders with both size and speed, and dependable rim protection consistently struggled to prevent opponents from getting downhill into the paint, generating corner 3s, or taking and making shots at the basket. (As erstwhile Celtic turned L.A. X-factor<\/a> Marcus Smart succinctly put it<\/a> in late December, \u201cWe doing s***. We’re being real s***ty right now.\u201d) This led to renewed rounds of questions about whether it\u2019s possible for the Lakers to build a championship-caliber defense<\/a>, both right now and in the future, and concerns over whether their offensive infrastructure is sound enough<\/a> to withstand the kind of tests they\u2019ll face in a playoff series.<\/p>\n

Said questions and concerns could have propelled Lakers brass to take an aggressive tack toward hunting for help on the trade market. Instead, they made a comparatively minor move<\/a>, trading Gabe Vincent and a second-round pick to Atlanta in exchange for<\/a> veteran sharpshooter Luke Kennard. While Kennard has played well and shot the cover off the ball<\/a> since arriving, perhaps his most attractive trait from Rob Pelinka and Co.\u2019s perspective is that his $11 million salary comes off the books after this season<\/a> \u2014 in keeping with the Lakers\u2019 reported preference to keep non-Don\u010di\u0107 (and, presumably Reaves) money off their books beyond the end of next season and \u201cpreserve cap space for 2027<\/a>, when the team expects to have space to sign a max-salary free agent.\u201d (Again: a tale of two teams.)<\/p>\n

While the bulk of that up-and-down pre-All-Star-break stretch came with Reaves sidelined by a calf strain<\/a>, even when head coach JJ Redick has had his full big three available, chemistry has remained difficult to come by<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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While the Lakers have scored at elite levels whenever Don\u010di\u0107, James or Reaves have run the show solo with the other two on the bench, according to PBP Stats<\/a>, they rank a comparatively underwhelming 10th in points scored per possession<\/a> for the season \u2014 due partly to managing to score like a bottom-10 offense in Don\u010di\u0107\/James\/Reaves minutes<\/a>. As prodigious as their respective offensive gifts clearly are, the Lakers\u2019 top trio has too infrequently deployed them in service of elevating one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger challenge is when they\u2019re all on the court together,\u201d Redick told reporters last week<\/a>. \u201cBecause they all want the basketball, and the reality \u2026 people have to sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we discussed on a recent episode of The Big Number, and as my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh recently teased out on The Finder<\/a>, the most successful iterations of the Lakers to date feature Don\u010di\u0107 and Reaves playing without James (minutes in which they\u2019ve outscored opponents by 10.4 points per 100 possessions) or James playing without Don\u010di\u0107 and Reaves (plus-7.5 points-per-100) in lineups that have<\/a> frequently featured more complementary<\/a>, lower-usage and (sometimes) defensively superior options like Smart, Rui Hachimura, Jake LaRavia, Jarred Vanderbilt and Jaxson Hayes.<\/p>\n

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Maybe Redick looks to more aggressively stagger his big three<\/a> coming down the home stretch, with an eye toward surrounding Don\u010di\u0107 and Reaves with more shooting and flanking James with bigger, stouter defenders. Maybe he sees more value in going the other way \u2014 trying to get them more reps together (they\u2019ve played just 879 minutes across 44 outings going back to last season<\/a>) in hopes of finding the synergy that could serve as a rising tide to lift all boats.<\/p>\n

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Or maybe \u2014 with the Lakers coming off arguably their best win of the season<\/a>, with a chance to rise back into third place in the West by knocking off the Wolves on Tuesday, sitting in strong tiebreaker position<\/a> with most of the teams with whom they\u2019re jostling for position in the middle of the Western pack and with a shot at securing a top-four seed still alive \u2014 Redick thinks his squad is becoming a little more Team A than Team B at the right time of year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is not to overreact,\u201d Redick told reporters after the win over the Knicks<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re 15-9 in our last 24 [games]. We\u2019re top-10 offense and top-15 defense [in that span<\/a>] \u2014 that\u2019s what we wanted to be coming into the season with this group, and that\u2019s where our group is right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they can stay there \u2014 if the recent shift toward heavier doses of zone defense has the intended effect, if Don\u010di\u0107 continues to dominate at an All-NBA First Team level, and if he, James and Reaves can find that elusive chemistry \u2014 the Lakers could have a chance to make some real postseason noise. If they can\u2019t, though \u2014 if the final month brings more of the same inconsistent execution and defensive work \u2014 then a team that never quite figured itself out might find itself getting another early start on what could wind up being a transformative summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are only 20 NBA players averaging more than 20 points and five assists per game, and Team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[676,1013,7,306,370,685,4077,399,32,304,4034,1698,300,4044,185,251,150,4033,4043,368,1171,326,152,6,472,395,1012,534,84192,1617],"class_list":["post-651212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-lakers","tag-atlanta","tag-austin-reaves","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers","tag-gabe-vincent","tag-hornets","tag-jake-laravia","tag-jarred-vanderbilt","tag-jaxson-hayes","tag-knicks","tag-la","tag-la-lakers","tag-lakers","tag-lalakers","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleslakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-luke-kennard","tag-marcus-smart","tag-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-nba","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-redick","tag-rui-hachimura","tag-spurs","tag-team-a","tag-trail-blazers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}