2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Can somebody tell me the difference between that Cleveland Cavaliers team that won the championship in 2016 and this Laker team.

Kyrie/Luka

LeBron/Lebron


Ayton/Love


Other notable guys Jr. Smith Reaves Hachimura Knect Mozgoff Hayes


What am I missing here.????? We got a squad. We should be able to get this job done.

LeBrons never played with a player like Luka. We all talk about this and that. But you had a franchise Dallas who told LeBron you know what???? We’re gonna give you our franchise hall of famer superstar at the age of 25 Luka Doncic you figure it out.

come on Lebron you gotta get this job done. Win the championship. That’s what makes championship players championship players. In the words of Kobe Bryant. Jobs not finished.

 

Sure, on offense, but he can’t play D anymore.
I really don’t understand why some fans only pay attention to HALF of the game.

 

last i checked, all nba is top 15. 2nd team is top 10.

my argument isn't that he sucked; it's that hanging the all-nba thing over all discussions is a bit disingenuous.

also just brushing aside that he can retire any minute is kind of ridiculous. this matters.

fair. are you thinking he'll make it 82 and 4 rounds producing at max salary level? you think a team next year will clear the space to sign him at that level and win a ring?

by lebron getting paid closer to al horford? though you'd need a time machine, too, as we just let a bunch of money go that we could have been recycling over time like the clips did.

elaborate--what was the FO to do?

not let caruso walk and not trade for westbrook. one i can explain away and not expect to repeat, the other...not so much.

maybe. denver and minny both played really well against us, imo. we didn't nail it for sure, but they were tough in those series.

if we added a holiday and a porzingis for basically nothing, we might win, too. those opportunities haven't arisen.

jhs pick is much ado about nothing. failing at a 17th pick should be expected based on history. happens most of the time.

vet mins for centers is all we had unless you wanted to rob peter to pay paul.

we did it right after the title, then the russ trade. took two years to dig out, then we cheaped out a bit on the contracts we got there, and now we're here.

extremely fortunate for the luka trade or else we'd be just dead in the water facing some tanking and some tough trade choices.

 

Is this a serious question?
LeEgo was 10 years younger. In professional sports with a salary cap, that makes all the difference in the World.
I won’t outline the rest of the differences since this one trumps them all.

 

comparing Lebron to Lebron at this stage is....... totally reasonable!

 

yeah...i just don't know how to function on this premise. this isn't 2015.

 

??

He was better than Rui on defense.

Like Luka? Who was (allegedly not at 100% in the Finals, or against Minnesota)

Luka is 26..why isn't he willing the team to victory?
We went to the Conference Finals, and would have won a chip, If Tinkerbell was just average. How is that Lebron's fault?

His game is what puts you in the discussion in the 1st place.

The cap space jazz is CAP..This offseason just proved that.

 

Boy Denver is dead(allegedly)if Jokic gets 70M or gasp 90M per. There is absolutely no way, that they can field a reasonable team. With Jokic at 90M, he would be making almost as much, as Lebron and Luka combined!!

 

I'll argue the last great Lebron playoffs performance was the Cavs' run in 2018. After that, LeBron was still a Top5/Top10 player, but not the player who could beat entire teams on his own across a playoff series.

The Lakers never got that Lebron.

 

He was indisputably our best defensive player in the playoffs. He can do it, he just actively chose not to pre-Luka trade when he had to generate most of the offense.

And even considering his poor defense in the regular season pre-Luka trade, he was still easily one of the best 20 guys in the league at worst. Individual offense is more important than individual defense.

The ideal scenario is LeBron forfeits a lot of the offensive load to Luka (who I think is primed for an MVP caliber year) and Austin and puts that energy toward the defensive end instead. I genuinely believe he can be an above average defensive player every night in the regular season if he accepts being like a 17ppg player. I think it would be a testament to his greatness if he did it, but in skeptical he will.

 

Yes, he can play good defense at times throughout a game, but he will never choose to do this, every single night, for an entire season.
If he does, it will be shocking and he will get his flowers because of it.
Am I expecting this to happen? About as much as I’m expecting to get pregnant and deliver a baby.

 

I would love this, but spoiler alert:

Spoiler

He's not gonna do it.

 

So he's Austin Reaves but less efficient?

(Austin in 17 games as a 2nd option last season: 25.9 pts, 7.4 asts, 5.5 rebs, 3.1 3's, 1.5 stls, shooting 46.7% FG%, 38.1 3P%, 54.0 2P%, and 91.4% FT%. And even better as a 1st option. And a year and a half younger than Booker.)

Booker is gonna make $75 mil in a few years, and some people don't think Austin will be worth $30-40 mil?


Edit: This post is not meant to downplay Booker, but rather to show how good Austin is. He will be great as a #2.

 

Man I gotta call Cap on this. Lebron just was all NBA last season what was he 2016?

He wasn’t the only reason Cleveland won that championship. And he was respectable last season stat wise. Still put up numbers in that Minnesota series. We didn’t have a Center. I’m no fool. I know LeBron wasn’t the defender in 2016 that he is now. But he made defensive plays in that series against Minnesota.

Luka was fouled not called. He had a ball that went off his hand I thought was off the other guy. Yes he turns the ball over way more.


But yall acting like LeBron is Rudy Gay now is just a joke. The injuries are up. But he’s still playing top Basketball.

Won a championship in 2020 with this squad.

Kevin love was no Dennis Rodman on that team or Ben Wallace so the defense was a wash.

but yes LeBron is still scoring the ball at a high clip.

 

He is 42 next December. Not that it really changes things much. But he’ll start the season 41.

 

In other Laker stuff.

Ayton said interesting stuff today at the press conference. It’s awesome playing with Luka like a video game. He’s motivated excited. Because he thinks this is the best place to compete for championships.

Says Luka looks buff really in great shape. So he can’t wait to play with him.

says Lebron and Luka make guys look like superstars with all the passes they make to guys.

says playing in Portland was challenging. Said some places you just get forgotten.

very candid though.

 

yeah, 2018 lebron was insane. i said it recently, but that was him at his absolute best offensively. he averaged 34 those playoffs and carried an otherwise mediocre cavs team to the finals

maybe he's still capable of that in 2020, but that title team was incredibly deep and there was no need for lebron to carry the team on his back. not to mention AD was far better than anyone he played with during his second cavs stint

 

Agree 2018 was insane Lebron.

I’m just saying last seasons LeBron was a damn good Lebron and more then capable of leading this team to a championship.

24 points a game 7 rebounds a game and 8 assists a game. He was putting up triple double numbers basically.

if we had Anthony Davis we beat Minnesota. If we had Deandre Ayton we beat Minnesota. They had an advantage and they took advantage because we made a trade.

you guys gotta look at LeBron. He’s gonna put up numbers We need to make sure those younger guys keep him fresh.

he needs to preserve his energy for the playoff run and he can do it.

we’re gonna lean on Rui. And some young guys like Knect and Reaves for the scoring.

Lebron won’t like it. But give him some of the kawaii treatment. At this point in his career he doesn’t need to be playing back to backs.

I’d sit him alot of games. He doesn’t need to be playing the Washington Wizards in a home game on a Saturday.

let a Rui and Knect have 35 minutes.

and I would take our roster over Houston’s I would.

 

I said that he is worth the contract and still producing. To me, he still is producing like a top 20 player. I wouldn't take many players over him: Jokic, Giannis, Luka, SGA are clear cut, after that, am I taking Anthony Edwards over Lebron when looking at a single year viewpoint? Maybe? Tatum is injured now and probably won't be the same player. Donovan Mitchell, Cade, Brunson, Curry, Durant, Harden, Mobley, AD are all a no for me.

So whether you have him as #5 or #20, it's really irrelevant because he is somewhere there. I'm not sure that's arguable. This is a simplistic take, but he was 6th in MVP voting, made the All-NBA second team and was an All Star. We may say he is getting those based on past career accomplishments but there aren't 20 better players so it's deserved.

As for Defense, if you take his play after Luka getting traded, there was a marked change in the way he was used. He had his lowest dribbles per possession and lowest touch length in his career while seeing a marked uptick in defensive metrics. I truly believe that not having to create for 36 mins a game will balance out his game better.

Lebron has succumbed to injury and getting older obviously has its issues. But lets look at all the significant players injured last year towards the playoffs:

• Joel Embiid - Broken
  
• Paul George - Groin
• Jalen Johnson - Shoulder
• Tatum - Achilles
• Brown - Knee
• Garland - Foot
• AD - Hip
• Irving - Achilles
  
• Isaiah Stewart - Knee
• Podz - Core
• Curry - Hamstring
• Butler - Glute
• DFS - Ankle
• KD - Ankle
• Halliburton - Achilles
• Harden - Foot
• Morant - Hip
  
• Dame - Achilles
• Zion - Back
• Murray - Achilles
• Troy Murphy - Shoulder
• Herb - Shoulder
• Jalen Williams - Wrist
• Jalen Suggs - Knee
• Maxey - Hand
• Malik Monk - Calf
• Victor - Blood Clotting
• Dylan Harper - Groin
• Fox - Hand
• Ingram - Ankle

This isn't even exhaustive. But have a look at how many young and in their prime players there are. It just shows that injuries are kind of a crapshoot in general.

Lebron has actually been quite healthy the last few years, he played 71 and 70 games the last two seasons. The average for the top 40 players was 66 last season. So you're getting your money's worth. The bigger issue is him not being able to play hard for 40 mins in the playoffs on both sides of the ball. We have Luka to carry alot of the offensive production now though.

We're worse. Because opposing teams can just load up on Luka more, and Reaves has been shown to have issues in the playoffs with physical play. Keon Ellis is a great player and John Collins isn't bad but we're worse if we traded Lebron for those. It's just tough replacing a top 10-20 player, basketball in the playoffs is a game where you play a rotation of 7-8 and getting 38-40 mins a game so an individual's impact can be significant.