As he approaches his 39th birthday, LeBron James is having an amazing year. His younger teammates clearly are not.
According to statistics from the Cleaning The Glass website, when James is on the court, the Lakers score significantly ahead of their opponents. A team that maintains a scoring advantage all season long is expected to win 67 games, which would tie for the eighth-highest win total in NBA history. Teams with 67 wins include the 2015 and 2017 championship-winning Golden State Warriors, the 1986 Boston Celtics and James’ 2012-13 Miami Heat.
James averages 35.9 minutes per game and the Lakers are a historically good team. But when James sat down, everything fell apart.In the other 12.1 minutes the Lakers have played this season, their net rating is a victory team. Through 82 games, the non-LeBron Lakers are projected to be 1-81.
Although James performed well, averaging 25.3 points per game and shooting 56.1% from the field, the rest of the team performed poorly without him. Part of that is due to the struggles of new members of the Lake Show.
Former Heat guard Gabe Vincent shot 7.1% from three. He averaged over 28 minutes per game and averaged 6 points per game. 24-year-old veteran Cam Reddish averaged 4 points per game in nearly 20 minutes of playing time. D’Angelo Russell averaged 17.3 points per game, but shot only 27.9% from three-point range and performed poorly defensively, having the worst defensive efficiency among all the Lakers’ rotation players.
With the Lakers looking to limit James to 30 minutes per game, head coach Davin Hamm simply can’t rest his star. They need a lot of playing time from James to get back to 3-4. With Anthony Davis injured on Monday night, the Lakers may have to take a closer look at James.
While this injury may not be serious, the Lakers’ list of injured players is growing to include Vincent, Jared Vanderbilt and rookie Jalen Hood-Schifino. James is great, but he’s missed at least 25 games in each of the last three seasons. Los Angeles needs to figure out how to win in the minutes James sits — because history tells us he’ll likely end up sitting for an extended 48 minutes.