How concerned should we be about the Los Angeles Lakers and their superstars?
When LeBron James returned to the lineup on Friday following a 20-game absence from a high ankle sprain, eight days after Anthony Davis came back after missing 30 games, the Lakers seemed to have survived the simultaneous absences of their two superstars.
Instead, the Lakers dropped the next two games, with LeBron leaving Sunday's loss to the Toronto Raptors early due to ankle soreness and sitting out Monday's surprising win over the surging Denver Nuggets. The Lakers played both those games without starting point guard Dennis Schroder, who's expected to miss 10 to 14 days due to the NBA's health and safety protocols.
With James now expected to miss at least the Lakers' next two games, per ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, the caveat about the Lakers being fine for the playoffs as long as their stars are healthy is in jeopardy.
Will AD, LeBron & Co. be ready to navigate a more difficult path than they faced as the No. 1 seed in last year's bubble playoffs? Let's take a look.
The case for calm: No need to hit the playoffs hot
In the wake of the Lakers' relatively easy run to the 2020 title -- only their NBA Finals win over the Miami Heat extended beyond five games -- it's easy to forget how much concern there was last summer over their sluggish performance in the eight seeding games preceding the postseason. After a thrilling 103-101 win over the rival LA Clippers on the opening night of bubble play in Orlando, Florida, the Lakers lost five of their next seven games.
With little at stake (the Lakers had already clinched the top seed in the West, and home-court advantage was no longer relevant for the Finals), coach Frank Vogel experimented with his lineups, including Dion Waiters playing the fourth-most minutes of any player on the roster in seeding games. As a result, the Lakers ranked 20th of the 22 teams in offensive rating during the seeding games and made a league-low 30% of their 3-pointers.
The poor shooting carried over to the Lakers' opening game of the playoffs, a 100-93 loss to the No. 8 seed Portland Trail Blazers, fresh off their thrilling run through the seeding and play-in games. The Lakers shot 5-of-32 (16%) from long distance in that game, fewer 3s than Damian Lillard (6-of-13) made all by himself.
Then the Lakers won Game 2 versus Portland by 23 points and experienced few hiccups the rest of the way to the title.
In general, the idea of entering the postseason hot is a canard. My former colleague Tom Haberstroh has pointed out that a team's performance over the first 10 games of the season better predicts playoff success than the final 10 games despite roster changes in the interim.
I've always been curious whether there's something special about the first 10 games or if any other 10-game stretch would do better than the last 10 because of the way teams locked in to playoff position rest starters down the stretch. To study that, I looked at every 10-game stretch over the course of the season (in 82-game regular seasons since the first round expanded to best-of-seven in 2003) and how well a team's point differential over those 10 games correlated with their point differential in the playoffs after adjusting for the quality of postseason opponents they faced. (Regular-season ratings are not adjusted for opposition.)
It turns out the first part of the season is indeed more predictive. Unsurprisingly, the very final 10 games of the regular season are among the least predictive because so many players sit out game 82 to prep for the playoffs.
(As for why there's a second peak of predictiveness near midseason, your guess is as good as mine. It might be related to the All-Star break, when teams can get healthy.)
In sum, the fact that the Lakers haven't yet gotten hot in time for the playoffs probably isn't a concern in and of itself.
The reasons for that might be.
The case for worry: Difficult path, stars with questions
As opposed to 2020, when the Lakers could rest up for the playoffs because they locked in their seeding, there's a lot more at stake over the final seven games of this regular season.
Monday's impressive win gave the Lakers some breathing room, but they're still just a half-game ahead of the Dallas Mavericks for sixth and one game up on the Portland Trail Blazers for seventh, which would mean a trip to the play-in tournament. Friday's game in Portland, which also will determine the head-to-head tiebreaker between the two teams, looms large.
Given the Lakers are unlikely to drop any lower than seventh, they'd be heavily favored to advance out of the play-in tournament, as they would need only one win in two games -- both at home -- to reach the playoffs. But the additional mileage on Davis and James as they work back from injuries could be an issue.
Wherever the Lakers finish, their path to the NBA Finals looks much more challenging than it was in 2020. Because the NBA's other top three teams during the regular season (the Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors) all lost in the conference semifinals, the Lakers didn't face any of the league's top five teams by record or point differential.
Certainly, the Heat were a tougher foe in the NBA Finals than their regular-season results indicated, but this year's Lakers will undoubtedly face a team in the opening round that was stronger in the regular season than any they faced in 2020. The West's top four seeds (the Utah Jazz, Phoenix Suns, Nuggets and Clippers) all have won at least 66% of their games and boast point differentials of better than plus-5 points per game. Barring upsets, the Lakers would have to beat three of those four teams to get back to the Finals.
They'll also have to do it with James and Davis potentially at less than 100 percent. While it wasn't specifically about this injury, James made headlines after his return on Friday by saying, "I knew I wasn't going to get back to 100 percent. It's impossible. I don't think I will ever get back to 100 percent in my career."
Two nights later, LeBron missed the final minutes of the Lakers' loss to the Raptors due to ankle soreness. Then he sat out Monday's game and now apparently will sit at least the next two. It's possible the Lakers are just being cautious, but James' continued issues with his ankle are troubling as the playoffs near.
By contrast to LeBron -- who has been predictably rusty, with the 16 points in his return representing his lowest mark this season aside from the game he left in the second quarter due to the high ankle sprain -- Davis had outright struggled before Monday.
Entering the game against Denver, Davis had shot 4-of-23 from 3-point range (17%) in his first six games back on the court and made just 46% of his 2-point attempts, producing a dismal .452 true shooting percentage that paled in comparison to his .588 mark from before the injury. Remarkably, the Lakers were outscored by 56 points during Davis' 175 minutes over those six games.
Davis looking like his superstar self against the Nuggets, as he scored 25 points on 9-of-19 shooting and sealed the victory by blocking Facundo Campazzo's 3-point attempt before the buzzer, was perhaps more important than winning the game.
As if the comebacks of Davis and James weren't challenging enough, the Lakers now must play without Schroder, the team's best other shot creator. That both makes it more difficult for the Lakers to navigate the final two weeks of the regular season and raises concerns about Schroder's level of play when he returns.
We've seen players struggle at times to regain their form after an extended stint in the health and safety protocols, and Schroder's timeline could put his first game back either in the play-in tournament or the opening round of the playoffs.
Schroder's absence on top of injuries for AD and LeBron means the challenges to a Lakers repeat are adding up. Unlike last year, a difficult matchup in the opening round will mean they must be ready to go from Day 1 of the postseason.
Although it's possible we could look back at this as an overreaction in two weeks if the Lakers are healthy and back on track at the start of the playoffs, it's starting to look more and more like those challenges might doom the Lakers' run.
How concerned should LeBron James and the Lakers be right now? - ESPN Philippines
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