LeBron James leaned back in the locker room and looked around wearily at the kind of bland road locker room so common in the NBA.
It was early in the 2022-23 season, but it didn’t feel that way.
The problems of last season, where the pieces never came together and failures piled up at an incredible rate, have yet to be resolved.
The Lakers kept losing, and James seemed exhausted.
“The whole process of trying to figure out what we’re going to do is exhausting,” Austin Reeves told The Times. “It’s exhausting for everyone. Especially for a guy like him, who Already knowing how things will play out in his career, it’s all up in the air.
“It wears you down more mentally than anything.”
But as the Lakers enter this season, James’ 21st in the NBA, the atmosphere is completely different. The team has a clear identity, a path to follow, infrastructure to rely on and reasonable championship expectations.
It all feels like three shots of espresso for James and the Lakers, who open the season Tuesday in Denver against the defending champion Nuggets.
“He’s back, I used to say 18, but now he’s acting like he’s 16,” Reeves said. “He could be Benjamin Button.”
The biggest reason everyone within the Lakers organization is so excited for this season is that they don’t need James to truly reverse aging. The team is believed to have built a more talented and balanced roster than the past two seasons. That leaves the Lakers no longer needing James to dominate every night, but instead letting him pick his spots while his teammates share the load, as he did in the playoffs.
“I like our chances more than anybody,” Davon Hamm said in the preseason. “It’s going to be a battle. It’s going to take a lot of work. Nothing worth having comes easy. We understand that.”
Hamm has never lacked confidence as Lakers head coach, and even after going 2-10 as a starter last season, he said he saw the Lakers adapt quickly to this training camp. This team has built on a trip to the Western Conference Finals, giving them the continuity they sorely lacked when they were swept by the Nuggets.
“Winning has a way of sticking with you. But so does losing. The way we lost and how tough these four games were, I think it lit a fire in everybody and we saw what we could have in a short period of time. What a great job,” Ham said. “Then you give us an offseason and we’re going to add additional pieces that are going to be critical pieces to us, our mix and our scheme. And then the leadership of LeBron and Anthony Davis, Their ability to impart wisdom to young people, new people, returning people, it’s like crazy glue.
“You can already see the joy, the high spirits and the positive energy.”
Of course, the threat is right around the corner.
There are many teams in the West that share the same beliefs as the Lakers, and the season opener is in Denver and at home against Phoenix, two teams that are absolutely built to win a championship. The Golden State Warriors are adding future Hall of Famer Chris Paul. In the East, Milwaukee and Boston made major trades to solidify themselves among the top competition. Many other teams are dangerous enough to derail any prediction.
Before the start of training camp, James said he would only worry about this issue once the games started. Well, here it is now.
“I’m not going to really put my energy into other teams in the league until I compete with them and compete with them,” James said. “My energy every day is focused on this team and how we can get better every day. How we can’t skip a step every day. Just because we performed last year doesn’t mean it will apply to this year. This is the first time since 20 -First time back in 21 rounds with the team. Other than that run, we’ve been a revolving door and we’ve had a lot of turnover. So I’m happy that we’re getting back to the core and then bringing in a lot of really, really good players Players who can help us continue to push forward with what we can do.”
As with any season, the health of James and Davis is critical. Davis played in 56 games last season, the most for the Lakers since his first year in Los Angeles. James missed 60 games for the third consecutive season, this time with a torn ankle ligament.
Lakers forwards LeBron James (left) and Anthony Davis touch chests while celebrating a goal during last season’s playoffs.
(Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)
If things go like they have the past two seasons, one wrong step and missing a month spells doom. However, the Lakers believe the way they are built means things will be different this time around.
“I really don’t know that, but I think it’s also a sense of trust. I feel like he understands and trusts what we have,” Reeves said of James. “The first few years, obviously my first two years, everything was up in the air. … As a collective, we never had a good feeling,” Reeves said. “But basically bringing back the whole core that made it to the Western Conference Finals. … I looked at him one day and was like, ‘Hey bro. We have a chance.’ He said, ‘Maannn.’
“That’s all I needed to hear. As far as I know, we’re confident in what we have.”