This offseason has been one of inactivity from the Los Angeles Lakers’ front office. While the team has worked to make additions to the roster via free agency and trades, nothing has come to fruition leaving mostly the same players surrounding LeBron James and Anthony Davis as it currently stands.
This doesn’t make the Lakers a bad team by any means as this was still a squad that made the playoffs. But for a franchise with eyes on competing for championships, it is hard to view the Lakers as contenders. LeBron, however, doesn’t feel the Lakers are as far away as most believe.
In an interview with Dave McMenamin of ESPN, James spoke about the current state of the Lakers, believing that they can still compete as long as he and Davis are leading the way:
“Of course,” James told ESPN when asked about the possibility of the Lakers contending again while he is 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 [Anthony Davis]. 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.
“We were one year removed from the Western Conference finals. 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.”
“And there’s so many teams in the league,” he said, “but we don’t see that we are that far off in the West.”
While the Lakers did wind up as the seventh seed, they were only a handful of games behind the fourth seed in an extremely competitive Western Conference. It won’t get any easier as the West is looking even more brutal this season, but LeBron is always going to believe in himself and Davis as being able to overcome whatever challenge is put in front of them.
There is still plenty of time for the Lakers to make some moves and improve the roster. Even if it isn’t a huge game-changing move, a couple of moves on the fringes could still boost this team overall and give James and Davis the extra help they need.
LeBron James says Lakers’ free agency struggles are ‘part of the business’
The Lakers’ failure to make additions this offseason isn’t for lack of trying. The team had contact with the likes of Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas but they all chose to sign elsewhere and LeBron James does not fault the front office.
James noted that this is all ‘part of the business’ in that a team can make the offer, but it is up to the player to want to come here at the end of the day and that simply didn’t happen. He added that the team simply has to move on and he will be ready to go once training camp begins.
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