Without a doubt, LeBron James is one of the greatest players to ever step foot on an NBA floor.
However, as is the case with many NBA All-Star players, James can be difficult to play with for other players. As such, the pairing between him and Anthony Davis has been watched extremely closely from the beginning.
The chemistry between the two has been excellent so far and much farther along than anyone could’ve expected at this point of the 2019-20 NBA season. It has been tough especially for bigs to adjust to playing with James and both Chris Bosh and Kevin Love went through their struggles on their way to an eventual championship.
Perhaps nobody had to adjust more than Bosh who teamed with James with the Miami Heat. Bosh recently spoke with Brian Windhorst of ESPN and compared playing with James to buying a Ferrari:
“Playing with LeBron was like buying a Ferrari,” Bosh said. “You know it’s the best in the world. It looks amazing when you see it. But you have no idea how powerful it is once you try to drive it. You can go right off the road.”
Bosh would continue about the work he and James put in together to iron things out and he believes the new Lakers duo will do the same:
“We spent hours and hours, days and days with late-night meetings and tension and jubilation, the whole gamut,” Bosh said of learning to play with James. “He and AD will have their struggles, but it takes that struggle to understand who they are. You want some of that. They want it to work, you can see that, so it will.”
One major difference between the pairing of Davis and James as opposed to Bosh and Love before him is that Davis is the second option, not the third. In fact, one could even argue that Davis is really the first option on this Lakers team with James operating as the point guard and distributor.
There is no Dwyane Wade or Kyrie Irving who also needs the ball with the Lakers so Davis can still operate as the top offensive option. But even still, Davis and James have a chemistry that was obvious from get-go and they can only continue to build on that.
James has been adamant that Davis will be the top offensive option and that has proven to be the case. As Bosh pointed out, there will be some struggles, but that is natural with any pairing. The two are on the same page and that chemistry has lead the Lakers to their best start in a decade.
