After surrendering his 2020 crown, won in the Florida bubble, in a dose horribilis marked by injuries, the Lakers have completely revamped their rotation to seek another title. It would be number 18 in their history and would put them in front of the NBA (it would break the tie at 17 with the Celtics). And it would be, of course, the fifth for LeBron James, who will begin his fourth season in LA at the age of 36 (he will turn 37 on December 30).
LeBron and Anthony Davis paid with injuries the complexity of a season marked by the shortest break (71 days) that a champion has had between two courses. Needs of pandemic calendars that want to return to normal, or the closest thing, in the 2021-22 campaign. One in which the Lakers want to return to being a contender for the title after falling in the first round of the last playoffs, against the Phoenix Suns. For this, a rotation changes a lot in which Talen Horton-Tucker has been renewed and Malick Monk and Kendrick Nunn arrive. That within the younger players. The rest are very illustrious veterans … but very veteran: Russell Westbrook (32 years old), Wayne Ellington (33), Kent Bazemore (32), Trevor Ariza (36), Dwight Howard (35) and Carmelo Anthony (37). In addition, they are followed by LeBron (36) and Marc Gasol (36).
And critics have taken note and have drawn the hatchet: the networks are filled with memes that mock the veteran Lakers and analysts anticipate the failure of a project that could end up being weighed down by the legs with too many kilometers, risk high of injuries and the difficulty of integrating a third alpha male, Westbrook, alongside LeBron and Davis.
But LeBron doesn’t want to hear those criticisms. Or rather the opposite: he wants to listen to them and feed on them. And wants, above all, that if then things go differently everyone remember what they are saying now on social networks. This has been his message: “Keep talking about my team, the age of our staff, how we played, how much we got injured, that our time in the NBA has passed, etc. etc. etc. Just do me a favor, PLEASE. And I say PLEASE. Keep that same narrative and that ENERGY when this starts. That is all I ask. #Thanks”.
In what will be his nineteenth season in the NBA, he wants to remain one of the great players in the League. Last season, he was among the MVP contenders before a nasty ankle injury stopped him cold and visibly burned him out in the playoffs as well. Your hope is that experience and talent outweigh age and that Westbrook fits the format big three with him and a DaviHe also had a nightmare last season, with injuries to his knee and Achilles heel.
