03-02-2022, 02:00 PM
A healthy Lebron and peak form AD is still pretty good. The concern is how much longer can you expect Lebron to be the best player on that team? Eventually he is going to lose a step. When that happens, it will get ugly. This needed to be the year that AD showed himself to be a top 5 player in the league and best player on that team. Unfortunately, he has not played to his previous level of play this year and has been injured. He also seems fine taking a back seat to Lebron and doesn't seem like he wants to be the alpha. He needs to be that. It would be a good problem to have if AD wanted to prove he was the best player on the team. Lebron might fight it a little though....as he has always been #1.
So in a perfect world Lebron and AD is a good starting spot. The Lakers have got themselves out of messes in the past. Do they have anymore magic left? It is going to be really hard. Westbrook was awful last night. Monk is going to be hard to resign...if they even want to.
I was listening to Zach Lowe recently and he was making the case if they just traded for Heild, signed Caruso and THT, kept their first round pick (wound up being Isiah Jackson who looks good), and I believe they could have used a portion of their MLE and potentially re-sign Schroeder that they would be in a much better spot now. Their salary commitments would have been similar as well. It seems like a long shot that they will be able to turn Westbrook into anything close to that this summer. But we will see.
So in a perfect world Lebron and AD is a good starting spot. The Lakers have got themselves out of messes in the past. Do they have anymore magic left? It is going to be really hard. Westbrook was awful last night. Monk is going to be hard to resign...if they even want to.
I was listening to Zach Lowe recently and he was making the case if they just traded for Heild, signed Caruso and THT, kept their first round pick (wound up being Isiah Jackson who looks good), and I believe they could have used a portion of their MLE and potentially re-sign Schroeder that they would be in a much better spot now. Their salary commitments would have been similar as well. It seems like a long shot that they will be able to turn Westbrook into anything close to that this summer. But we will see.