LeBron James Weighs In On The Lakers' Chances This Season

Will the Lakers contend this year?

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Lakers had a down season for their standards in 2023-24 when they had to qualify to the playoffs through the NBA Play-In Tournament and were eliminated in the first round of the postseason. The team regularly lost games it could have won, and simply fell short of expectations.

Still, Lakers All-Star forward LeBron James believes that they can rebound and contend this upcoming season. A significant part of his belief comes from still playing alongside star teammate Anthony Davis, who remains one of the best players in the league.

"Of course," LeBron told ESPN's Dave McMenamin when asked about the possibility of the Lakers contending again while he's still with the franchise. "Because we've done it before. We've done it before and we still have two guys who commit every single day with myself and AD. We commit to excellence and commit to win. And we feel like any situation, any given year, we can put ourselves in a position to be able to succeed. And we're not that far off."

On top of the combination of LeBron and AD, the Lakers have been toward the top of the NBA in recent seasons. They won the NBA championship in 2020, and were just in the Western Conference Finals in 2023.

"We were one year removed from the Western Conference Finals," LeBron said. "Obviously, this year it didn't go as well this past year. Didn't go as well as we would like, but we're not that far off."

The Lakers of course have the pieces to contend with some of the top teams in the league, but they have to put it together. That's a big reason they fired last year's head coach Darvin Ham, and have replaced him J.J. Redick. Redick does lack any coaching experience, so it's uncertain at this point if he is the right coach to lead them further. They also missed out some top free agents who could have helped the team have even better chances at contending, but they still have the core of LeBron and AD who should be enough to at least allow them to contend.

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