Most, if not all, people would agree that the Los Angeles Lakers don’t have a truly championship-caliber roster right now. However, they may have as much star power as any other team in the NBA right now thanks to Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and LeBron James.
The team has been hit by one key injury after another this season, and as a result, those three stars have seldom been on the court together. To be exact, they have played together in just 10 games this season, but the Lakers have gone 7-3 in those games, which is a pretty stellar winning percentage, albeit in a small sample space.
James said during his NBA All-Star Game media availability on Sunday that the most important thing for L.A. after the All-Star break will be getting and staying healthy.
“Most important for our ball club right now is health,” James said. “I can’t state it any more clear. Not quite sure how many games we’ve had where we’ve had a full roster. We’re over the halfway point and there’s not been many games. Obviously, I know it’s been a lot more than over half, for sure, and probably even plus that.
“Our success is going to come down to obviously our health. Our coaching staff putting us in the right position, I think they’re going to give us a game plan every night. But when it comes down to what we have to work with, we have to actually go out and see it. We haven’t been privy to having that opportunity much this year.”
The superstar was then asked what the Lakers can accomplish the rest of this season, and he made it clear that they’re still getting used to playing alongside each other.
“It’s hard to say because this is a new group,” James said. “We added DA (Deandre Ayton) and Marcus [Smart] and Jake [LaRavia], just got a new acquisition (Luke Kennard) on our ball club a couple games ago. It’s too hard to really say what we’re capable of.
“I know that when we’ve played some of our best basketball of the season, we’ve looked very good. On the other side, when we’ve been terrible, we’ve looked disgusting. So, I think the most important is, if we can get healthy, how many minutes we can be on the floor, how much chemistry we can build with this sprint starting.
“You would hope that you could have the regular season to kind of build that cohesiveness and things of that nature, but I’m hoping that, if we can get healthy, we can start to build that.”
The Lakers have done very well this season in games that have been close and competitive down the stretch, and they have also consistently won when leading heading into the fourth quarter. But when they have lost, they have usually lost by double digits — in fact, 18 of their 21 losses have been by more than 10 points.
They currently have a 33-21 record and are in fifth place in the Western Conference. But while they have the ninth-best winning percentage in the NBA, their net rating is -0.3, which is 16th in the league.
Los Angeles will resume its regular-season schedule on Friday when it hosts the Los Angeles Clippers.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: LeBron James: Health is most important for Lakers right now
Reporting by Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire / LeBron Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
