Let’s start with the obvious. No. They will not. With the addition of Lebron James, the Lakers now have one all-star. Cleveland had two all-stars in Lebron and Kevin Love and got throttled in the NBA finals this last year. Consider that in the last two finals, Lebron has averaged 34, 10, and 10 which has been good enough to win a grand total of ONE game. In today’s NBA, as long as team like the Warriors exist, having one transcendantly great player on your team just isn’t enough to get the job done. Plain and simple.
Then consider that Lebron has never won an NBA championship with fewer than two all-star teammates*, and he will have exactly none going into this year (that’s not saying one or even a few of his teammates don’t make big leaps this year). The asterisk here, of course, being 2016 when they came back from 1–3 to win game 7, with the help of a Draymond Green suspension, and Andrew Bogut injury, and Harrison Barnes apparently getting all of his basketball skills stolen by the Monstars from Space Jam. Kevin Love was a teammate then, but was injured for the playoffs. He still helped with regular season seeding, etc, but offered no help in the finals.
The Lakers will be a much better team. They are immediately a top 4 team in the West with the addition of Lebron. But to get to championship level, they will need to add at least one other big piece to their roster, and likely two. That probably makes them EVEN with the Warriors as currently constructed, who have the 2nd best player in the league in Kevin Durant, and two other top 10 players in Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, who is top 10 when you consider his defense. Draymond is agruably top 20 as well. If Cousins comes back healthy, so is he.
I’m sure Lebron would like to add more championships to his resume, but I’m convinced, as much as he believes in Magic’s 3-year plan and committed for the long haul, the move to LA wasn’t primarily about titles. It was about family. It was about lifestyle. It was about business and life after basketball. It was about developing into an even bigger icon on the greatest stage in sports. Win a title? It’s all gravy. But the odds certainly aren’t in his favor, that’s for sure.
A hypothetical path to the finals would be having to beat the Pelicans in round 1, the Rockets in round 2, and the Warriors in round 3. Then, if you are lucky enough to beat all those lopsided odds and squeak those series wins out—no matter how improbable—you will likely get the Celtics in the finals, who have as much talent as anybody in the league and are hungry to hoist that Larry O’Brien trophy.
So let me reiterate again. The Lakers will not win the title in 2019. But that shouldn’t be seen as a slight against them, as much as a credit to the couple other great teams in the league that are legitimate contenders after years of exceptional player development, offseason moves, and basketball management. Measure the Lakers season on their improvement over last year when they were 35–47, and you’ll enjoy it for what it is rather than stumble over what it won’t be.
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