Lakers prior to trading for Luka: 32-19 (62.7%). Lakers since Luka’s debut: 41-26 (61.2%)
Pre-Luka:
Post-Luka:
Playoff performance:
By all measures, the Lakers haven’t gotten any better since trading for Luka.
Except right now AD can barely play because he’s so injured.
So Lakers made the trade at the right time . AD career looks basically over and he’ll never have a healthy season ever again .
Not to mention Luka has Lebron who’s too similar a player . He needs a defensive anchor instead and will be a contender . Give him Gobert or someone else and watch him thrive.
Luka needs an entirely new roster pretty much. The only players who should be kept are AR and maybe Ayton.
I would say Reaves only at this point, and even that is going to be a challenge to build around with 2 max contract guys who are poor defenders.
Whole backcourt is BBQ chicken
I could see arguments for LaRavia and maybe Hayes (if you can keep the latter on a low contract as a back-up rim-running big).
But AR is probably the only one you definitely try to keep. I think I’ve heard he has had issues as a catch-and-shoot 3 guy (like worse than you’d expect), which (if true) he probably really needs to work at to be better off ball when he’s on the court with Luka (obviously just go to town when Luka is on the court).
watch the playoff series vs minnesota last year and you’ll see the catch and shoot struggles
Oh, he’s always gonna have an athletic deficiency in comparison to his peers. But even without tough physical defenses, I think his shooting isn’t as good as it is off the dribble.
5 game volume doesn’t mean anything
Ya he seems to only be accurate when he gets into his dribbling a bit
Nico did it Kyrie being very near a max, albeit Kyrie is not nearly as bad a defender as Reaves is. He got really lucky with the Hornets and Wizards helping them with Gafford and PJ on cheap contracts and Lively being so good from the jump.
I think Pelinka already spent all his luck on Luka but who knows at this point.
Kyrie is the better defender by a decent margin and is also a much better offensive player. That’s not a shot at Reaves, it’s just that Kyrie is on another level, especially offensively.
So the Mavs sacrificing some backcourt defense to have one of the most dangerous offensive duos, if not the most dangerous, is something you can live with. However, the Lakers making the same sacrifice, or an even bigger one, since Reaves is definitely a worse defender, to have a very good Luka–Reaves duo is something I can’t see working in a championship run.
I would have loved having Reaves on the Mavs. He’s a very good player, but Nico couldn’t even get him in the Luka trade. Still, I can’t see him and Luka working together in the long run if the goal is a title.
A Luka and Reaves backcourt is never winning anything
They’ll get eaten alive on defence
who’s the other max guy
I feel like the Lakers are at a point where they’re waiting for Lebron to retire in order to really build this roster around Luka
CBA rules exist
again 50m off doesnt mean 50m cap space
It’s not just about the cap space but team identity and how you build around a player lmao
But unlike other superstars who are serviceable to good defenders or can play off ball, Luka is a pretty one dimensional. I don’t think the lakers will every be able to put together all the specific combinations of players that Luka needs
The Lakers needed a new roster even before the trade. They had 40-year-old Lebron on a max, day to day Davis on a max, and basically the same players plus Christie.
I dono why people are acting like this Lakers roster wasn’t a dumpster fire the past few years. The Luka trade bailed them out of potentially years of tanking.
Making the WCF in 2023 gave them a couple more years of leniency.
Zach Lowe been saying this since we got him. Not that we ever had a good roster since the Westbrook trade but our roster is not a good fit for Luka. AD could compensate for our bad defenders to a degree but Luka can’t. But we also lack enough threats offensively to make us an offensive beast. Yea we are efficient and amazing in clutch but outside of our top 3 we lack reliable shooters and almost no one has foot speed (on offense or defense) so we don’t pressure the rim.
I think the lakers are screwed. When you superstar is below average defender and really cannot help off ball on offense, you need such a specific set of players—I don’t think lakers will be able to ever surround him with those guys.
I hate this post for the lack of context. We’ve known this about Luka for 5 years and people are still surprised by it. Rim rolling, hustle bigs and shooters is the formula for contention around Luka. We all know that. Granted it’s easier said than done, but dont act like hes is washed when the roster isnt built like it needs to be.
If only there was a team built around his strengths and weaknesses last year….
Where does this post claim that Luka is washed? I must have missed that part.
This is a “lol Lakers” post, it focuses on Luka because it’s noting that the team he went to just didn’t improve like many expected it would. If OP had simply switched “since trading for Luka” into “since trading away AD” nobody would be weirdly defensive about AD.
But that is the problem. It’s damn near impossible for them to build a team finding all those things—those kinds of players rarely hit the market, let alone multiple players like that—and not even talking about the salaries. The reason guys like LbJ, Kobe, Duncan, and Mj dominated so well was because you didn’t need to hide them in your scheme. They were the best defender and scorer on their teams—essentially two player.
They traded 31 year old Anthony Davis for 25 year old Luka - they’ve extended the window for relevance and competition by making one of their lead players younger
Yea the current laker roster wasnt built for him like the Mavs team was.
Lol Luka would literally rage quit with gobert fumbling passes. Good joke
That’s fair, but also the Mavs take care of their stars wayyy less than the lakers do, that includes medically. I’m not sure I wouldn’t chalk up some of this “Mavs curse” to just plain mismanagement. It’s not like the org has proven themselves out of that.
The numbers kind of underline that star power doesn’t automatically shift outcomes.
The team is built opposite of what he needs. They are doing amazing for having no transition defense or players that compliment Luka.
Yeah, Austin Reaves has been particularly harsh towards Luka.
lakers need to trade for players who say stuff like “You’re doing great, Luka!” and “Nice shot, Luka!” and “Looking good man, you’ve lost a lot of weight”
This deserves more upvotes. Hopefully this complements your point.
Austin and Luka’s numbers together are actually incredible this season. A top dynamic offensive duo.
This team starts off every game looking sluggish and lazy like they never stretched prior and that’s probably due to their lack of athleticism and younger guys who can run. They start every game down like 0-8 and down 10 points to end the first quarter the end up coming back later. Their point differential is -0.3 which makes no sense given they’re 5th seed.
They score 115.9 points per game and their opponents score 116.3 lmao
It’s a sign of not trying 100% because our 1B star player is 41. A team with 2 young stars is gonna come out swinging. Lebron does just enough to get the win. The Lakers goal isn’t dominating teams, it’s coming away with a win while expending as little energy as possible.
You could criticize it, but outside of one BS call they’d be like 13-0 in clutch games. So the method works.
If you’re going to talk about 1 call leading to losing a clutch game, then it goes the other way around as well and how one call might’ve swung the other way. It’s just not a sustainable strategy
It works but I’ve been watching the point differential periodically and it dropped from +1.5 -> -0.3
I’m a lakers fan too but have to admit it’s because Luka and AR shoot so many free throws but I can’t see this lasting come playoff time unless the team decides to start playing defense. This team needs to start dominating defensively because the differential dropping shows the team is getting lazier
Luka gives less effort then Lebron . We weren’t dominating then either
Transition defense is just effort getting back to position.
Great players adjust.
This sounds like one of those lines they put at the end of a Nike ad I cannot cap
AD was also a star
And he anchored their defense.
Which he never got respect for the entire time he was on the lakers, especially by lakers fans
??? Nah man, myself and many other Lakers fans were in the trenches arguing with goofballs saying Jaren Jackson Jr. is a better defender than AD back in the day, most Lakers fans have always respected AD for the all time great defender he is.
It’s a big fanbase and I don’t doubt there are people who did. But AD is one of the players who was the most disrespected and shat on by his own fanbase that I’ve ever seen in my time watching the nba. (Out of players who were actually playing well, I mean, tbf)
He never got the respect because no one noticed that LeBron was playing zero defense. AD had to make up for him and also score 30 points in order to “pull his weight” according to fans and the media.
Lmfao he was playing all time defense. Legit historic tier defense. And lakers/lebron fans were deadass mad that he wasn’t also scoring like Shaq to go along with it. His bubble run is one of the greatest individual two way playoff runs that the league has ever seen, and any other fanbase would celebrate it the way the bucks fans celebrate Giannis or the nuggets fans celebrate joker.
I’ve said before that Celtics fans have a greater approval rating for Al Horford than lakers fans have for Anthony Davis.
Taking AD and Luka out of the conversation, are the rest of the 2025 Lakers better than the 2024 Lakers? I’d have to say no.
They’re both incomplete and have an ass bench
they already had star power? if anything it shows star powers makes up for a bad roster construction
Ummm well what would our record have been had we kept AD? Guarantee it looks much worse. Plus, now we have a future to look forward to rather than figure out how to dump AD past his prime.
It was also a terrible fit that only makes sense because of how good Luka is. That they haven’t gotten worse is actually a good sign.
Terrible conclusion lmao
So their sample size increased by 16 games and only saw a 1.5% drop in win rate? Seems pretty good to me. Imagine how much it would have dropped had they kept an injury riddled AD.
This Lakers roster is not very good - they have very limited shooting and no good rim running big men. Idk what people expect from them.
Imagine how much it would have dropped had they kept an injury riddled AD.
That’s what people seem to be missing. What would the Lakers record be the second half of last year and this year had they kept AD? It would almost certainly be significantly worse than it’s been with Luka.
As I said in another comment, even if it didn’t make them better last year or this year, 5 years from now they will almost certainly be better compared to an alternate timeline where they didn’t make this trade.
Yeah you have to look at the TRADE off of the trade…
Luka is also only 26, so they got substantially younger.
Also imagine the win percent when we actually fit pieces around Luka that play to his strengths
they have not built a team around him why are people acting like our front office is good at all lmao
In less than a year?
Yeah idk why people are rushing to declare this a failure. Lakers have like a 4 year timeline right now.
Tbf I’m not sure Luka is very happy about wasting the past 2 years of his prime on a rebuilding team lol he could be extremely unhappy if they aren’t great next year
He signed the extension, Lakers can tolerate him being unhappy.
Or he can pull a reverse Anthony Davis and demand a trade out lol
No they don’t. In 4 years Luka would be like the third oldest person ever to win their first championship as the best player on their team.
Next season is when their window should realistically open. That’s when most of the remnants of the LeBron-AD era will come off the books and they will have like $70 million in cap space and 3 tradeable 1st round picks to reshape the team around Luka. It’s entirely possible that Rob Pelinka badly fumbles it and dooms the team for the remainder of Luka’s 20s, but either way that’s when the opportunity to build an actual good roster will open up.
Pelinka is mid. Dude of course will be a legend forever for landing Luka, but he is not a good gm.
Weve had bron, ad, and now Luka. Some of the easiest guys to build a team around. We had a good team in 2021 but the shortened season and Solomon hill fucked it up and Pelinka threw in the towel, blew it all up and got Westbrook.
legend forever
Legend or being lucky he was friends with an idiot?
Yall are so dumb, our “fans” suck. We have a litany of injuries and our guy that was literally on the MVP ladder is missing significant time and all the sudden we’re garbage when we were hanging at the 2⁄3 seed most of the season.
Like, please, have a memory longer than a goldfish
We are in a good spot this year so far. But Pelinka is still mid and has a bad track record of building teams around the literal easiest guy in nba history to build around in LBJ
Thank you. We were literally the 2 seed not too long ago, and now Reaves has been out for a lengthy amount of time. Once we’re healthy again, we’ll be in a good spot. I agree with you, our fans are idiots.
Look at how many games LeBron and AD missed the last 4 seasons dawg.
If anything this proves to me Luka can just win you games despite who he has on the court. Personally dont really like his heavy ballhog game and complaining, but he can really make it work. If yall can smoehow build around him, gonna be scary
Last time I checked wasn’t his on-off like a +8 swing with him on this year? Correct me if I’m wrong I haven’t checked in a minute
Tell us how many games have Reaves, LeBron missed before/after
Well as his msny AD missed then lol
The team was more logically constructed with AD. The fact that this miscast roster with Luka is doing as well as the best Lakers run since the ring is a compliment to Luka.
1000% this
Team isn’t even built to play to Luka’s strengths yet, and he’s playing with a 41 year old superstar
They changed a PF/C to a PG and didn’t trade for anyone. That’s the end of my analysis.
They literally gained a C. Just because it’s not a “trade” doesn’t mean they didn’t acquire other players lmao
Even with Ayton, their team would’ve been way more coherent with a (healthy) AD.
There is no world where the trade wasn’t a huge win, and it’s dumb to try and argue otherwise.
That has nothing to do with what that guy said lol
All the analysis that’s needed tbh
Luka plays defensively as a pf, he isn’t a pg in that sense
That’s what happens when you actively choose not to build a team around Luka and instead build a team with Luka
They did just get him. Let’s see what they do next year when they have the chance to remove LeBron from their books, trade AR and build a team around Luka.
I actually think AR works well with Luka, playing the kyrie or brunson role. They just need elite defenders all around them to make it work. Like imagine if they had Lively/Gafford as the centers, and PJ washington and Derrick Jones Jr. as the wings! Could be a finals team.
They play well together, but their perimeter defense is always going to be an issue. If you could put Luka next to a 2-way player, I think that would be optimal.
They’ll have 2 movable picks too
3 movable picks in the offseason, 26 31 33
The 26 pick will be locked in so value set, if it’s a low first rounder it won’t be worth much.
Lebron getting off the books only really reduced the tax, doesn’t measurably improve their ability to get free agents
Lakers only have \(76.88M on the books next year if you remove all free agents and player options. Gotta think AR, Ayton, and possibly Smart all opt out. Not sure how cap holds work for guys opting out, but gotta imagine Reaves has a pretty small cap holds since his option is only \)15M. They will have a ton of financial flexibility as soon as they renounce guys like LeBron, Rui, Gabe, and Kleber.
cap hold still on the team until players left or re-signed, so i assumed only reaves opt out (maybe smart), i think ayton pick it up (i dont think anyteam wants to give him more than 10m) that’s extra 30m gone (22m reaves caphold + 8m ayton PO). not counting roster charged under 12 guys, rookie salary cap hold, and other things
good luck reshaping the roster and find 8-10 new guys with just around 50m. because in this case only luka, reaves, ayton, vanderbilt, laravia, knecht, and thierro on the book right?
doable though : 2 20m guys + 1 10m guys + 1 room exception + all vetmins. thing is FA is whack, and players that FA know lakers NEED them. lakers will throw 90m to quentin grimes at this rate
it’s not ability
it’s limited by CBA rules
I don’t think that’s correct. After this season, most of your expensive players come off the books. AR’s 14M will be the most expensive player you have besides Luka.
Lebron on zero contract adds 15m max. Ok bro . AR is getting a bigger deal. Lebron is out playing Luka despite being old af
Trade AR? He’s a free agent.
Damn. That’s unfortunate for them.
Could sign and trade him if needed. Or sign him with plan to eventually trade him.
With Luka’s luck he’ll be stuck with a near max Reaves for a couple more years
It’s possible but yeah I think that would be a mistake
No one chose to NOT build around Luka, what kinda bizarre perspective is that?
I mean they haven’t really had a chance to build around Luka. People expected a few years for them to build a good roster
They can’t do that until Mr Main character is off the team 😂
The Mavs traded him despite that. The Mavs were mediocre that last year with him , they took away the lob target and his own offence has cratered . Bro is so fuckinh slow out there. Leg injuries have cooked him with bad habits but yall delusional
Luka’s team starts after LeBron. That’s when the Lakers will be scary. LeBron right now just takes up too much cap space for his style.
That’s when the Lakers will could be scary..
FIFY
Lebron has outplayed Luka in multiple long stretches for the lakers.
That’s not really very surprising. LeBron aside from being a top 2 player of all time is also just more versatile. Who do you think its going to play better with a mismatched roster that doesn’t really make sense? Guarantee you Luka has a higher ceiling right now today with the correct players than LeBron does while also having a lower floor
You aren’t understanding what SparkyForce meant.
trolling right?
Lebron is out playing him the last month. Luka is cooked then if Lebron is the one wasting cap lmfao narratives my god
CBA rules exist. his money off the book not open up that much cap space especially with reaves extension
I’m pretty sure they sold more jerseys though…
Maybe but right before that was the weird Bronny spike and Rui draw in Japan so maybe not so much and it helps all teams not just the Lakers.
Revenue from player jerseys is pooled and distributed among all teams (players receiving around 43%) as part of their Basketball Related Income (BRI) through the cap mechanic.
Luka’s only played in 57 games as a Laker so including games he didn’t play in but faulting him for the team’s record is disingenuous.
And OP’s comments just prove they are pushing some nonsense Luka hater narrative.
Could you imagine this team with a broken down AD on it and this version of lebron being what they are right now? No, no you cannot.
Let’s have some appreciation of context including Luka not being near 100% all of last season either.
The luka trade wasn’t exactly a win now move, and they’d probably be worse off with AD not playing anyway.
You mean to tell me a team without cap space or much future draft picks hasn’t been able to improve their roster? Consider me shocked!
This is disingenuous since they haven’t had the time nor flexibility to build a roster around him when they’ve got $50+ million and two roster spots tied up in a rapidly aging (yet still quite demanding) All Star and his G league progeny.
But that’s what happens when yoh trade for such an expensive player. It’s why teams that traded for KD have not done that great.
Financially they’ve gotten better lol
Okay let’s swap AD and Luka again. I’m sure Lakers would love it.
They’re one of the most injured teams this year plus it’s a gap year. They’ll get better next year when they get off Bron’s contract
They’ll get better next year when they get off Bron’s contract
No they won’t, they have to pay Reaves, Rui, Ayton etc are all off the books too
Even if you are LA it won’t be easy to sign players
They can move on from Rui is they want. Only players that are for sure coming back (without a trade) are Luka, Vanderbilt, LaRavia, Knetch, Bronny and Thiero. They have a ton of cap room flexibility, especially if they trade Vanderbilt.
Yeah the team doesn’t make sense around Luka and they basically stayed the same. I really don’t know what this is supposed to prove.
Its a zero effort hate post.
This narrative falls apart if the same logic is used for the Mavs. They have cratered without Luka so that proves that Luka is better than AD+Christie.
So a team randomly thrown together with Luka is equally as good as a team built around Lebron and AD over half a decade? Also the Lakers’ top 3 players have been constantly injured this season.
LeBron’s numbers are better this year
Obviously credit goes to Luka
They’ve made tons of 💰 🤑
I’d be happy if Lakers tanked for the next 50-60 years, but this is quite silly. They knew they were trading away the short term by completely gutting the defense, in order to set up the next decade. Not surprising at all, nobody except Lakerfans think they can contend currently with the gaping holes in the team.
Prime age for NBA player is supposed to be 27-31.
Luka is still 26. AD is 32.
Your data suggest that Lakers are quite similar as they were before. But they got 4 prime years coming while AD is pretty much slowly retiring with his injuries.
Your comparison is just another proof on how ridiculous was this trade.
It varies a little by height, but it would be much more accurate to say that prime is 25-28.
For players over 6’9”, it’s even earlier.
Wrong.
The lakers were 28-19 prior to trading for Luka. You can look that up.
Also lets state the obvious the team wasn’t built around Luka and is still being built around Luka for the longterm future. The team prior to Luka trade was built around Lebron and AD. The Luka trade fell into there lap and they had to do it and did and now have next decade at competing. They just need to build roster that better fits Luka which they are doing.
Posts like these are stupid af. I mean come on bs real. If the idk clippers say suddenly trading for Jokic I don’t think they’d automatically be competing for a championship rignt away they’d still have to build around him and put those pieces next to him then they’d be in a position to compete.
Just gotta use your head here. The trade wasn’t made for short term it wss made for the future and longterm. They weren’t gonna have a perfect roster around Luka in a year. Its gonna take probably a few seasons of building and getting those pieces around him. The roster layout and construction was balanced around primarily AD prior to Luka trade. Luka and AD are obviously drastically different Players. Also trading AD killed there center depth and Hayes was the starting center bc they didn’t have the time to replace him. Ayton has been a step up and obviously isn’t perfect either but its a start.
Luka’s first game was February 10th against the Utah Jazz and they were 32-19 at that point.
31-19. They won that game then become 32-19.
Your still wrong the percentage flips to better with Luka if you account that. Also again it was a longterm future move. Your not even considering the fact it hasn’t been a year since trade happend and the roster was never built expecting Luka to be a Laker 😂😂😂 stupid post.
I recommend you use your brain for once.
Which players on this roster were there for LeBron/AD?
It was better suited around them. Also AD was the starting star center. When they traded for Luka they traded AD and had a backup starting as center. Again use your noggin. If you trade for a superstar with a completely different skillset you then gotta build out that roster to compliment that skill set.
I recommend you remake this post in 5 years and then good or bad post the results. Not even a year is stupid af.
Which players. Name them? Who are the LeBron/AD players on the roster.
So they stayed the same while getting a superstar like 8 years younger? Seems like it’s worked out, even if you ignore all the other context that goes into the stats provided
I think a lot of people assumed that the trade would not make them better in the short term. Trading away a defender like AD and replacing him with Luka on what was already a poor defensive team probably wasn’t going to make them better until they had a chance to build around Luka more. You still make the trade 1000⁄1000 times because they just got an easy answer to what they do post LeBron.
This comparison is dumb. AD last year was averaging 26&12 and was healthy for the Lakers and LeBron was healthy and made an all nba team.
This year LeBron and AD have both missed a lot of time and their performances have regresses so the Lakers would be far worse if they hadn’t made the trade. The reason why the trade was awful was not because AD was performing poorly at the time, it was because of his age and health issues.
Are the Mavericks also doing about the same with AD and Christie?
No doubt they be worse with a busted AD.
Lakers are not going to be good enough to do anything with Luka UNTIL they make massive roster changes. They need defenders, shooters, and PnR specialist centers.
To be able to make these big changes they will either have to wait for LeBron to retire, which also allows them to trade more firsts as a couple years go by, or they would have to trade Austin Reaves soon to build around Luka and LeBron.
The LUKers aren’t gonna be for real competitive contenders until they take multiple seasons to change their roster. It took Dallas some trades for Kyrie, PJ Washington, and Gafford PLUS tanking to acquire Lively. They made the finals directly after all that.
All LA has done is switch their vet mins from one group of players to another group, and signing Ayton. Nothing near enough to contend
The Lakers’ roster is a mess, but that trade was 10,000% worth it.
imperfect fit around him + injuries
We’ve found Nico Harrison’s account.
Luka took a team to the finals, it requires complete roster rework so this post is just missing the obvious point
kinda underscores how god awful they’d be without him
feels like everyone is just finding every possible excuse to shit on Luka this year
“By all measures”
So are you saying the Lakers are better off with Anthony Davis? What is the point of this post? Or are you trying to say the Lakers haven’t built the proper team around Luka yet?
I think it was expected they might need a couple years to reshape the roster around Luka. Their roster hasn’t really made sense since then. But I still think the trade is going to look really good as AD continues to age and decline
Yeh but if they didnt make the trade we’d be talking about them being a bottom 5 team the next few years
Except the Lakers are on pace to have a higher win/loss than last season. What a dumb ass cherry-picked post. If you take out the games from last season when Luka was coming off of injury to a new team he was completely unfamiliar with and didn’t fit him, then they are obviously better with Luka then they were with AD
I mean the team was built for a completely different type of player. It’s not like they’ve had a lot of opportunities to rebuild the roster with Luka in mind. They’ve only really signed LaRavia. They have about $100m coming off the cap this offseason and they can reload with players that can complement Luka much more.
Lots of moving parts. Emergence of AR-15, LeBron injuries, incorporating Ayton. IF they can all stay healthy maybe something can happen, but I’m waiting for Bron to get traded at the deadline to a contender
Their three best players don’t play defense. That’s obv not gonna work
I guarantee their 27, 28, 29, and 30 seasons will look better than if they hadn’t made the trade lol
Now add in injuries
All this tells me is Max Christie is the goat
i would love to see what the team can do if lebum takes a vet min.
Doncic apologists in this thread need to come to terms with the following problem:
Either Doncic is as-great as most of you think he is,
or
Doncic requires an entire roster built around his particular strengths and significant weaknesses.
It is one or the other, because actual great players do not require an entire roster custom-built for them, in order to reliably reach the second round of the NBA playoffs. That low bar is regularly cleared even by not-great players on rosters that were not custom-built for them – yet Doncic has managed that feat exactly once in his career to-date, and only then because he was sufficiently fortunate to play the Clippers in the first round.
I get what you are saying but doesn’t everyone pretty much know this is a dead year until the lakers can retool?
Makes sense.
Luka for AD, Max Christie, and a first was a pretty even trade in the short run. The advantage comes over time, due to Luka being much younger than AD.
Lakers will need to redo their roster in the offseason when they have 3 first-round picks available.
Ok, now do Dallas.
Games since the Lakers put a team around Luka that makes sense 0
Now do one without the trade. Just in Luka’s place imagine AD sitting on the bench.
I think Lakers’ performance is still highly correlated with LeBron’s performance and health.
Well tbf the current team is way less balanced than prior, and they are still just as good, you also have to consider how bad ADs availability has been since then
OP’s obsession with Luka must be studied.
I mean remaining around the same level is a lot better than whatever result they would’ve got from having permanently injured AD and partially regressed 40 year old lebron having to carry the team
I mean that’s kinda what we all thought at the time. Both teams get worse in the short term. Lakers get a post LeBron bail out
The same folks that will tell you KD made the Rockets worse are in this thread upset with OP.
Both positions are goofy fwiw. But I definitely notice some usernames lmao.
he’ll never have a healthy season ever again
This is possible but he’s only 32. People saying your career is over can be a motivator. Kyrie already redeemed himself.
Pretty sure mavs will take him back if you want
They need to get rid of lebron he is dragging the team.
WE CAN GO BACK IF THATS OK WITH YALL
Now do the Mavs win rare pre luka trade and post luka trade
Using the same logic:
Mavs with Luka - NBA finals
Mavs without Luka - not NBA finals
This team was 19-7 with a win % of 73% before Austin Reaves suffered his injury in the Houston rockets game. That would be 2nd in the west right now.
Luka has missed 8 games.
Lebron has missed 17 games.
Reaves has missed missed 23 games.
The lakers have only had Luka, Reaves, and Lebron on the court at the same time in 8 games and multiple of those games Reaves was suffering from his calf injury and Lebron was coming back from his injury.
The Lakers have just had bad injury luck this season with all of their best players. It is that simple. This team needs some more defense, but we really don’t know how good they are because they haven’t even played together for a stretch of games yet.
I mean, AD was, maybe is a still a Top 10 player when he’s healthy. At least Top 10 caliber, if not actual.
Stuck with a Lebron roster and Lebron coach. Give it a year. Lebron will be on the bullets or retired and JJ will be gone.
AD playing half the games > Luka
Nico was right
let’s not skew this now. the lakers have been perennial play-in contenders before Luka
Laker bad, updoots to the left
Yea, you’re such a victim mate.
nico was right, or at least he wasn’t wrong.
i mean the numbers prove it.
undeniable evidence. just please don’t do the same with the mavs.
You swapped a top 10 injury prone star and a 38 year Lebron for a top 5 often injured/weight issues star and a 40 year old Lebron.
Honestly it just about evens out