Careful people will jump any chance on Lakers medical staff. “They” not being the Lakers. Don’t know if JJ really meant bungled or just the Lakers weren’t involved as he wasn’t their player at the time.
he stated it diplomatically, but the clear implication to me is that where he is and where he should be (in the estimation of our medical team) aren't matching.
God, hate when he does that. Worked for Cleveland because they were an older team but with young legs and guys who can pass the ball besides LeBron, it's so frustrating watching him burn the shotclock. Luka+Reaves should be handling the ball more and LeBron should focus on playing off-ball and fill the missing role(s) the Lakers need him for. The offense is just too predictable when LeBron hogs the ball.
it's good that this post is hiding in this thread. but yes. any offense involving lebron handling out top is a bad offense in 2025. teams played possum with us on that all year last year, imo.
Yeah teams are very willing to just switch LeBron/center P&Rs now and he can only blow-by the bigs that switch onto him a few teams every game. The play I keep thinking about is from that @Denver game, when Luka threw it cross-court to LeBron in the opposite side corner, but like lead him toward the basket for an easy dunk. That's what we want. Luka or Austin creating some kind of advantage at the point of attack, whether by P&R or iso, and then swinging to LeBron who can then attack a rotating defense in an advantage situation. If we can simplify things for LeBron so he's making those kinds of decisions (drive and kick, drive and finish) rather than asking him to create something out of nothing against a set defense, I think he can be awesome. Like a better version of what Marion was on those Suns teams.
Apparently he dunked with his head above the rim. While training limited I'm sensing we are going to love him. Hope he develops a respectable corner shot in the next couple years
"It is the lakers destiny to have a player who will be perpetually reevalutated in 2-3 weeks with knee swelling." Yeah Darius .... same as it is the Lakers destiny to perpetually have their medical staff poked fun at regardless of changes made over the years and even in light of how new deep pockets owner Mark Walters must have evaluated it and made the easily affordable changes this year. Spoiler: salty language
again, reading between the lines, it sounds like whatever procedure he had, our staff didn't like either the procedure itself or the way it was managed afterwards (before he got to them). none of that's great, but i'm not sure you can put it at the feet of our medical staff in any case. you kind of hope that the FO would have been a little more careful in evaluating this before moving way up to draft him, particularly after partially citing medicals as the reason not to take whitmore over jhs. but maybe they knew his knee was currently a mess and thought there's no way you even get a look at a player of this level in the second round without that. and we gave him 2 guaranteed years in a contract when we really didn't need to. that part means the medical team felt they could get things right in a timely fashion, so going forward, i think it's fair to hold them to account a bit.
