Will Los Angeles go crazy this summer?
The Los Angeles Lakers just hired their possibly second choice to become their 29th head coach in the much-buzzed-about form of former 15-year sharpshooter JJ Redick. The team heads into the 2024 NBA Draft with one clear flier pick on their agenda and a variety of options at No. 17.
But will the team move forward in a meaningful way on the hardwood in 2024-25?
All-NBA L.A. superstar combo forward LeBron James, already the league’s oldest player, will turn 40 midway through the year. It’s unclear if he can truly be the No. 1 guy on a title team anymore. It’s also unclear if All-NBA centre Anthony Davis, whose offensive bag has lessened considerably since his 2019-20 heyday with the franchise, is versatile enough to be the club’s top option, either. He may just be best suited to be a defensive anchor and volume post scorer but needs a lot of shooting around him.
Los Angeles finished a combined 90-74 under former head coach Darvin Ham across its past two seasons, eking its way to the Western Conference’s No. 7 seed via the play-in tournament. The Purple and Gold snuck into the Western Conference Finals in 2023 but got flattened in a “competitive” sweep by the eventual champion Denver Nuggets there. L.A. squared off against Denver in the first round this past spring, and fell to the Nuggets again, this time in a five-game “gentleman’s sweep.”
In a fresh offseason survey of The Ringer staffers, Howard Beck proposes a bonkers move to ship James out to a longtime playoff nemesis.
“Let’s get nuts: LeBron James to the Golden State Warriors for … whatever it takes. (I trust Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Rob Pelinka to figure out the details.) At this stage of their careers, [Stephen] Curry (age 36) and James (39) need each other if they want to chase another ring before retirement. The Lakers, as constructed, have no shot of contending. The Warriors, as constructed, have a thin chance, at best. But a Curry-James partnership could be electric, even at this late stage of their careers. And the Warriors are better positioned to acquire James than the Lakers are to acquire Curry.”
Last season, the Warriors finished 46-36 and didn’t make it out of the play-in tournament. A pairing of a soon-to-be-37-year-old Curry, a soon-to-be-40-year-old James, and a 34-year-old Draymond Green may not quite get James to his fifth league title, but it’d sure be fun.
Elsewhere in the piece, Beck’s colleague Matt Dollinger also seems to advocate James be flipped to Golden State, among other pseudo-contenders, mostly to help get the 20-time All-Star away from mediocre Los Angeles starting point guard D’Angelo Russell.
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