USA TODAY International Edition
Worse record with LeBron?
Lakers must win 3 more just to match 2017-18
LOS ANGELES – LeBron James is worth a lot, that much is obvious.
He was worth the Lakers forking out $153.3 million in salary over a four-year contract.
He’s so good that he was worth effectively handing over the keys to the franchise, reimagining the squad in a way that met with his approval and going after free agents (like Anthony Davis) that met his specifications.
He’s been worth a lot to the folks who count such things as jersey sales and season ticket acquisitions and those who monitor the level of media attention a club is receiving and who like seeing lots of celebrities in the prohibitively priced courtside seats.
He’s worth a lot to his sponsors and business partners.
He’s worth a lot because he owns part of the English soccer club Liverpool and a slice of Blaze Pizza and because the Forbes list says so.
And if the Lakers’ season continues in its current vein, by the time the campaign wraps on April 10, it looks likely that signing James will have been worth precisely nothing to the win column.
With nine games to go, it takes very little imagination to foresee a situation in which the 32-41 Lakers finish with an equal or worse record than the 35-47 they mustered last season.
“It is not what we signed up for, but during the year things happen,” James said. “You don’t even try to wrap your head around it, you just keep pushing.”
The Lakers will miss the playoffs and end up with a record that, in the Western Conference at least, sets you up for a silent summer. That much was essentially guaranteed by the team sleepwalking out of the All-Star break and somehow getting even worse and formalized by a faux pas at home to the Nets on Friday, when defeat was iced by James slipping and spilling the ball out of bounds while driving late.
Last year, attaining 35 wins was something of an achievement for a team possessing nil in the way of star power. Once James decamped from the Cavaliers, a complete transformation wasn’t expected, though a 48-win effort was bandied around as a popular predictor. The 2017-18 mark is the only thing to shoot for now.
If you ask anyone at the organization to explain it, there is a common thread. They all talk about injuries. “One thing you can’t control is injuries,” James said. “We talked from the beginning how our depth would be a huge part of our team. We have just had bodies and bodies and bodies down. It is hard to have any kind of rhythm or chemistry.”
With all of that in mind, does this season’s record even matter?
It should. The team has now spent six seasons outside of the playoffs, winning 126 combined games over the five former campaigns. A winning culture is not ingrained, it needs to be discovered and built, piece by piece.
No one expected this to be a year of title contention, but the Lakers were supposed to be better than what we’ve seen. Instead, they are crawling toward the finish line, a team that’s playing worse than clubs that are tanking.
Maybe things will improve eventually, maybe next season will be a fresh start. Maybe squad strengthening will permit James to show his true value. Maybe, maybe and maybe. But this season, in terms of the most important currency in sports — wins — he has been worth … nothing.