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LeBron James Appears to Express Dissatisfaction With Lakers Team Construction

The Lakers are a handful of games above .500 with a short window of time remaining before the trade deadline.

Josh Wilson

James scored 25 points and logged 11 assists in the Lakers loss on Sunday
James scored 25 points and logged 11 assists in the Lakers loss on Sunday / @mcten on X (formerly Twitter)
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The Los Angeles Lakers are sitting a few games above .500 at 22-18 and sixth in the Western Conference, barely good enough to avoid having to participate in the play-in tournament to qualify for the NBA playoffs were the season to end today. Not much breathing room to suffer an injury, a sudden lull, or a tough part of the schedule. LeBron James would argue that razor-thin margin is par for the course with this team.

Speaking with the media after a 116-102 loss to their cross-town rival LA Clippers, in response to some questions from Dan Woike of the LA Times, the Lakers star bemoaned the fact that the Lakers can't tolerate much error, appearing to blame it on the way the team is constructed.

"We don't have a choice [but to accept that the margin for error is slim]. I mean, that's the way our team is constructed. And we have to play close to perfect basketball," James said.

Head coach J.J. Redick agreed with the sentiment, adding that the team can not, "create that margin organically," according to Dave McMenamin's coverage.

It's tricky to tell exactly what to make of comments like this following a frustrating loss in mid-January. With less than three weeks until the NBA trade deadline, the knee-jerk reaction may be to correlate this with a plea to team president Rob Pelinka to make a move that gains the Lakers some extra margin. Or, maybe it's just a frustrated postgame press conference addressing the reality that it's tough to win on a nightly basis in the NBA.

There is an empirical reality to what James and Redick are getting at, though, with both James and Anthony Davis having contributed far more to the team's scoring this season than they have in most other seasons with the Lakers.

Season

LeBron James points

Anthony Davis points

James + Davis points

James + Davis % of team points

2019-20

1,698

1,618

3,316

41.2%

2020-21

1,126

786

1,912

24.2%

2021-22

1,695

927

2,622

28.5%

2022-23

1,590

1,451

3,041

31.7%

2023-24

1,876

1,822

3,698

38.2%

2024-25

881

946

1,827

41.1%

Not since 2019-20 (a title-winning season for the Lakers, one should note) have James and Davis contributed so much to the team's overall scoring as this season.

One could debate whether those two leading stars leading the way is optimal or not. 2022-23 brought more scoring support from other parts of the roster, but that year was lowlighted by a poor offensive fit with Russell Westbrook.

The two stars got even more support the year before from Russell Westbrook, Malik Monk, and Carmelo Anthony. At the time, adding those layers of support seemed like a possible win for the Lakers offense, but they now serve as cautionary tales against adding pieces just for the sake of adding.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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