Watch Rob Parker and Chris Broussard discuss the impending teardown coming for the Los Angeles Lakers this off-season following their second consecutive playoff loss to the Denver Nuggets, as both Rob and Chris think LeBron James is actually the real culprit behind LA’s first round dumping, and not Darvin Ham, D'Angelo Russell, or the rest of the Lakers' sterile role players.
Check out the segment above as both Rob and Chris explain how LeBron’s numbers, although still appearing as good as ever on the stat sheet, are deceiving and actually inconsequential and empty.
Chris Broussard: “Now the teardown begins for the Lakers. Darvin Ham is probably going to get fired – all indications seem to point to that. Then they’re going to either add a star or add more role players in an effort to find out what was wrong and why they didn’t advance.”
Rob Parker: “They can do all they want. They can run another coach out; Vogel got run out after winning a championship. They hung up a banner for Darvin Ham, it must have been that important that Darvin Ham led them to the mid-season tournament! But can we just get down to brass tacks and stop dancing around the issue? You can keep dressing this team up, keep going and getting different head coaches, different players off the bench to do the same thing and try to say ‘that’s the reason why they’re not winning’, but the fact remains that LeBron James doesn’t impact winning the way he used to do.
His numbers were fantastic, AD played well, it didn’t matter. I keep hearing ‘LEBRON IS PLAYING AS WELL AS HE DID TEN YEARS AGO! HIS NUMBERS!’... Sometimes his numbers are even better [than 10 years ago] but he’s not the same guy, and that’s where the issue lies. That’s not to say that LeBron shouldn’t be out there or he should retire, but this notion that you’re going to fix everything else around him and that’s going to be the magical elixir to the Lakers is the problem... They’re 1-8 vs. Denver the last two times they faced them in the playoffs – those are horrific numbers.
Chris Broussard: “LeBron James in his prime was a fantastic defender. That was the strength of that Miami Heat team. He and Dwyane Wade getting out there on the wings defending like crazy and taking teams out of their stuff. LeBron can no longer do that. LeBron could also control the tempo and the pace of a game because he was essentially the point guard. He can’t do that anymore because of stamina. Some of his skills have improved – his three-point shooting has definitely improved to the point where in today’s NBA, where it’s easier to score, where when you go to the basket there is really not nearly as much resistance than there used to be earlier in his career, he knows how to get his numbers. I’m not saying he’s just playing for numbers, but he’s smart enough and skilled enough still to get big numbers, but the impact of those numbers are just not what it used to be.”
Parker: “Look at the landscape, LeBron is not winning again, I’m sorry. If you’re hoping and wishing that Jamal Murray or the Joker have to be hurt for them to win, that’s all you got, because if those guys are healthy the Lakers are not winning.”
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