The first year LeBron James and Anthony Davis came together on the Los Angeles Lakers, it was truly a special season. The two superstars melded together perfectly and the Lakers as a whole were a juggernaut from the beginning of the season all the way through the bubble to the 2020 NBA Championship.
But in the two seasons since, things have been a major disappointment. Both Davis and James missed major portions of the 2021 and 2022 seasons and the overall roster construction has been less than ideal, leading the Lakers to not live up to expectations.
But Davis still has a firm belief that he and LeBron can be the leaders of a championship team. He reiterated this belief recently while also adding that the two Lakers superstars will come together this offseason and figure out how to get back to that championship mentality of two seasons ago, via Dave McMenamin of ESPN:
“I think us two can. We’ve shown that we can,” Davis said, conducting a season-wrap news conference before the Los Angeles Lakers played their final game of the season on Sunday. “I don’t know that’s something we just have to reevaluate in the offseason, upstairs, me and him talking about this season and what we would like to see next season and kind of just figure it out.
“… [We will] come together as a group … to get back to championship mentality that we had our first year. So that would be a very interesting conversation just from the standpoint of what changed. I mean, injuries, but even when we were healthy, I don’t think we were able to reach our full potential — for whatever reason. So I think we want to figure it out and just get back to that championship pedigree that us as players know we’re capable of.”
There are a lot of roster issues the Lakers will have to sort out this summer, but at the end of the day, this team will go as far as Anthony Davis and LeBron James take them. Both are still among the game’s best players but they have been unable to stay on the court these past two years.
Expectations are always high with the Lakers, but Davis and James themselves hold themselves to those same high marks as well and they plan on figuring out how to get back to the top as the Lakers expect to be every year.
Davis believes it was tough for Westbrook to adjust his game with Lakers
One of the major issues of this year’s team was the addition of Russell Westbrook and fitting his game next to that of Davis and James. Of course, injuries limited the trio to just 21 games together, but regardless of who was on or off the court, the superstar point guard struggled more often than not this year.
Davis spoke on his struggles, saying that the Lakers didn’t need the Westbrook of prior seasons and he struggled to adjust to fit a new role. The big man did however defend Westbrook from the criticism he has received, noting that the fault of the Lakers’ struggles lies on everyone.
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