Are the Cavs better than LeBron for the first time ever?

Are the Cavs better than LeBron: Lakers struggles

The Los Angeles Lakers are playing poorly this season. As of this writing, they sit at 21-21 with a negative net rating on the season despite playing the league’s third-easiest schedule. The Russell Westbrook acquisition has been a disaster, both in terms of his poor fit with LeBron and also the opportunity cost of filling in around them with minimum players. Players are coming straight from the G League to the starting lineup, and not always because of COVID-19.

LeBron himself is playing well, averaging 29.1 points per game to go with 7.4 rebounds, 6.6 assists, 1.7 steals and 1.1 blocks. Those are numbers that could once again place him on the All-NBA first team. Yet even James has his limits, and whether it’s age (37 years old as of last month) or the incredibly poor fit of the roster around him, he hasn’t been able to elevate his team into a winning squad.

The NBA season is a series of ups and downs, and even if the Lakers have a worse record than the Cavs it doesn’t mean they are absolutely the better team. James has missed some time, Anthony Davis has been out for a long stretch and much of their bench has been decimated by COVID-19 and injuries.

Even so, put all of the Lakers’ players together, and this just doesn’t look like a contender. Even if they get healthy by the postseason (and huge if, given the injury history of much of this roster) the pieces available to Frank Vogel just don’t fit together. Nothing about the Lakers except for LeBron’s history suggests this is a title contender. The question that has to be asked now is whether this is even a playoff team.