Plead with the universe desperately enough and it will answer, but it doesn’t always give you the outcome you imagined. This much is true in life as it is in basketball, and divine intervention has come at last for all the clamoring, desperate fans who have been begging for an answer to the Golden State Warriors. But I hope a lot of first-borns were not promised in return, because that answer ended up being the Los Angeles Lakers.
As an antithesis to the Warriors, the new-look Lakers are, well, perfect. Not in skill, mind you, but in every other way they will approach this season. The Warriors have gone beyond behemoth at this point. The way they continue to add stars season after season has made them into a kind of post-Goliath, a prototype that’s eclipsed the traditional super team. So long as even a fraction of them stay healthy, there’s no way to stop them, not by skill at least.
So, send in the clowns.
This year’s Lakers are poised to do something not seen in the league … maybe ever? They are, by virtue of just being themselves, creating a league-wide, singular focus on fun. Yes, the Warriors are phenomenal, but they are boring as hell. It’s what makes them so easy to hate. Collectively, they have the charisma of a scouring sponge. As fans, we have grown spoiled. Never has there been an era in basketball when even the most tenuously contracted NBA player has been so skilled and athletically gifted. We don’t want talent anymore, or to watch basketball at a caliber previously unimaginable night after night. We want antics.
LeBron James and the union of character actors he and Magic Johnson now employ will give us this, and with it, excitement. That’s the feeling threading through the usual anticipation ahead of the NBA season this year, because what the Lakers are poised to deliver is an entirely new era of basketball that promises to be so performative that it has yanked the heads of even the most skeptical, previously oblivious, or outright hostile fans to the Lakers historic franchise right around.
Since his full-time move to Los Angeles this summer, James has grown increasingly chill. Already a player with absolutely nothing to prove, James has settled happily into the SoCal lifestyle of hitting the gym, hitting the beach, and generally behaving as someone with a surplus of vitamin D. He’s happy! For James, the move means the promise of living year-round with his family and diving deeper into the gilded depths of Hollywood. His production companies SpringHill and UNINTERRUPTED are both based in L.A., and so are virtually every other juggernaut in film and television, most of which he’ll be involved with in the next few years. HBO, ABC, NBC, CBS, probably every acronym in television, plus Netflix and Starz, have all agreed to deals with James, who will either star in or produce major projects.
This is in no way meant to suggest that James’ focus has shifted from basketball — his work ethic would not allow it — but it is that same work ethic that gives him the ability to extend himself beyond the court now that he is so much better situated. James will feel this in the roster, too, likely playing less minutes this season even while simultaneously leading the young and hungry half of the Lakers and directing the Frankenstein’s monster of one-year veteran contracts.
What does less in-game LeBron James look like? He’ll be rested and healthier, sitting in a hybridized role as face of the franchise, front office study, and part-time coach whose full-time job is being extremely good at basketball. James has always been a kind of coach on the floor, but it will benefit Luke Walton to set firm parameters around his own role as coach and James’ as a player while still remaining opening to the dual nature James can offer when it comes to creative playmaking.
Second, he’ll have more focus. Relinquishing minutes on court means he’ll see all the more from the sidelines. Communication is going to be key for this roster that features a number of personalities and there’s no doubt James and Johnson will work with Walton to hone this strange team for all its specific, very nuanced skill.
Rajon Rondo’s distribution will fit nicely with James’ playmaking, and the erratic playing style of Lance Stephenson and Michael Beasley can be buffered by the positive, diffusing energy of JaVale McGee, a starting caliber player in terms of confidence who will be in a key position to finally really shine. Though Kyle Kuzma can be touch-and-go, the new, weird veterans he’ll play alongside could prove stabilizing for how chaotic they themselves can be. Likewise, the severity of Lonzo Ball’s playing style and matching personality could use some loosening up, and the shooting talent, offensive energy, and quiet defensive range of Brandon Ingram is only going to improve under the directness of Rondo and the attention of James.
For their convenient placement in a city considered languid even by California’s standards, the Lakers are not a historically chill team. The Showtime era, while entertaining, was the opposite of chill. Jerry Buss modeled his newly-obtained Lakers franchise on the look and feel of a nightclub … which, like, “In Da Club” was important to me, too, but as far as a blueprint for your basketball team, that’s wild. Buss wanted production value as a focal point in games, basketball as a backdrop, and hired a live band and the first team dancers as in-game entertainment. He wanted celebrities courtside to lend to the sense of exclusivity he was working to maintain.
It all went with the up-tempo, run-and-gun playing style of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson, but off the court, Abdul-Jabbar was a nightmare and Pat Riley, who came on later, was transformed in his time with the team from an easy-breezy coach to a tyrant. No doubt times have changed, but the legacy of a coach who encouraged the wives of his players to cater to their every whim while turning a blind eye to, often, front-office encouraged infidelity doesn’t really age well.
But it’s the closest era of Lakers overlapping James’s own budding one that will lend the most support to how entertaining this current team stands to be and demonstrates how much the franchise could use the remedy. Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers, for all their collective wins, is confusingly polarizing. Confusing not because there isn’t enough support showing what a genuine nightmare Bryant was to play with while chasing championships, or how adept he was at pushing people — including Jackson — out, or even that he admitted on record to not seeking consent in the instance in which he was accused of raping a woman. No, there is plenty of support for all that. What there isn’t a ton of support for is that Bryant was half as talented, or as much of a strong leader, supportive teammate, or legacy player as he gets credit for.
Bryant was the face of the Lakers franchise at its most effective and the framework of the team’s success had him at the core. Put another way, Bryant benefitted greatly from rosters built around him, playing alongside Shaquille O’Neal and Pau Gasol — to whom he finished second in Win Shares from 2000-2002 and 2009-10, respectively — in their prime. On and off the court. Bryant embodied the traits of the kind of star he strove to be, one who rose at the diminishing of everyone else. He understood there was power in repetition, that he could build a legacy based on branding. It didn’t matter that he made 37 percent of his shots in the last few minutes of a game to tie or win, because he was The Closer. He was isolated because he was self-isolating, a tyrannical player who instructed his teammates not to talk to him, who lashed out with the kind of language used by those long protected and enabled.
And why not? It worked. He won titles.
James has also benefitted from teams being built up around him, but in most cases, he is the one with a hand in the building. Look up “Bryant” and “teammate” and the first descriptor that comes along is “difficult,” or explanations that how “difficult” it was to play with Bryant had no bearing on why guys quickly pushed for trades away from the Lakers. Look up James and teammate and see qualifiers like “scrutiny,” sure, but then comes “self-awareness” and “support.”
Is what makes a team fun to watch the action of them winning or the prospect? If it were only the action, then Bryant’s Lakers would have been sustainable, and all present day NBA fans would be glutted on Golden State. It’s the prospect of a team catching a break, going on a run, making an impossible shot to take a contentious win — basically whatever makes you catch your breath — that drives the possibility of surprise within the extremely orchestrated, high-valued parameters of professional sport.
The Lakers are not poised to oust Golden State for the championship this season more than any other team in the league, but they hold the biggest “what if?” and, inherent in that — along with all the weirdness of a team made up of disparate personality parts — is the promise of fun. Fun in a league so fully-loaded already seems a big ask, but that’s why it’s such a needed, necessary relief and balance. Like a cartoon steam valve announcing it’s quittin’ time, watching the Lakers this season is going to be like taking a breather from the rest of the league. Even if the team is a trainwreck, they are going to be fun as hell to watch. Not in some warped Lakers revenge narrative way, it’s just going be good, exciting basketball.
It seems ironic that it would take the addition and leadership of LeBron James — basically the definition of a hyper-driven superstar — to get an historic, west coast franchise to finally hang loose, given what an elemental force he can be. But it’s that same, basal quality that has served as the necessary alchemy on whatever team to which he’s brought it.
In the NBA, LeBron James is the weather, and so long as he’s in Los Angeles, you’re gonna need shades.
