National Post (National Edition)
Can LeBron bring back Showtime in Year 1?
Expectations high despite team’s rebuild
NEW YORK• If you have been to Staples Center to watch the Los Angeles Lakers play, or better yet to the old Fabulous Forum, you can surely hear the regal voice of both buildings in your head while reading this sentence.
There has always been a memorable majesty in the way the club’s longtime public-address announcer, Lawrence Tanter, has welcomed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Kobe Bryant or the Laker Girls onto the floor. For nearly four decades, Tanter’s delivery has been classy and soulful. It stays with you.
With NBA teams set to open training camps Tuesday, I can’t stop imagining what it will sound like the first time Tanter ushers LeBron Raymone James into a Lakers home game.
“That question has been thrown my way with a great deal of regularity over the last couple (of) months,” Tanter acknowledged in a recent phone interview.
Tanter, for the record, hasn’t been practising his LeBron introduction all summer. His off-season focus is honing trickier pronunciations — understandable given that another new Laker is Ukrainian rookie Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk.
The 68-year-old Tanter presumably doesn’t need the practice. It is bound to come naturally for such an accomplished practitioner of his craft — one of the few remaining holdovers from the Lakers’ Showtime past.
There is far more uncertainty in trying to forecast what James’ first season in purple and gold realistically holds. How will he cope with the rigours of the no-nights-off Western Conference? After eight-consecutive trips to the NBA Finals, can he stomach the battle ahead just to reach the post-season in the unforgiving West?
The safe bet: None of the above will flow as smoothly as Tanter’s intros.
For the Lakers, of course, these are all welcome curiosities. The drama, scrutiny and mammoth expectations that come with signing James away from his homestate Cleveland Cavaliers are all standard accoutrements for Hollywood’s team. The Lakers typically import their stars rather than draft them — the franchise itself was brought in from Minneapolis in 1960 — so the script isn’t new, even in the wake of five-straight seasons without a playoff berth.
For James, though, Monday’s scheduled introduction to the local news media will thrust him into an unusual position. You have to go back to the 2004-05 season, his second NBA campaign, for the last time he started a season with a team more likely to miss the playoffs than win the championship.
So it’s still hard for some of us to buy into the idea that King James, who turns 34 in December, willingly took himself out of the league’s title mix — even just for one season of rebuilding — by choosing the Lakers. For all of his family’s (and his own) fondness for Tinseltown, as well as the obvious appeal of working alongside a team president in Magic Johnson who can surely understand him better than any other, it figures to be a long and testing wait for James until the Lakers can build a title-worthy supporting cast around him — most likely July 2019 at the earliest.
In the interim? James can’t possibly be as OK with his Year 1 hand as he seemed to be in a recent interview with beIN Sport, in which he listed five teams not named the Lakers as the most legitimate contenders in pursuit of Golden State: Houston, Oklahoma City, Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto. Can he?
“I’m not one that thinks being in the West is such a disadvantage,” said Dahntay Jones, who played alongside James in Cleveland during their playoff runs in 2016 and 2017. “The West is actually easier on your mindset and your body, your morale. It’s warm. Practicing every day in L.A., it just puts you in a better mood. I think that’s going to make a big difference for him.”
Former Nets stalwart Richard Jefferson is another James teammate of recent vintage who isn’t predicting a grim grind. Jefferson disputes the notion that the inevitable growing pains of a squad filled with youth (most notably Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma and Lonzo Ball) and, shall we say, unpredictable veterans (JaVale McGee, Michael Beasley, Rajon Rondo and Stephenson) will torment the demanding James.
“When he went back to Cleveland, I promise you he didn’t go there thinking, ‘OK, it’s time to go to four-straight NBA Finals,’” Jefferson said of James’ return to the Cavaliers in 2014. “But would anyone really be surprised if the Lakers made the conference finals? He’s that good. Any time LeBron steps on the court, he’s the best player on the court.”
“I always gave him a little flavour because he deserved it,” Tanter said of his years introducing James as a member of the visiting team from either Cleveland or Miami. “But there’s obviously going to be a little bit more timbre in my voice for a Laker.”