The Los Angeles Lakers have a total of 17 NBA championship rings. LeBron James and Anthony Davis helped with their most recent championship in 2020.
Now this is already a duo that you don’t want to mess with. But with the trade of Kyle Kuzma and a 2024 and 2028 2nd-round pick and additions Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Montrezl Harrell, they could be even tougher. Russel Westbrook and Dwight Howard are also coming. Out of the 15 players currently on the roster, eight of them are new to the team. Just to put that into perspective, the player that’s been on the team the longest is Lebron James, who’s been on the team for only 3 seasons.
Now this team sounds absolutely awesome, but there’s one downside. Age, The average age for an NBA team is 26 years old. The youngest average team in the NBA is the Oklahoma City Thunder, whose average age is 21 years old. But the Los Angeles Lakers (and I’m not joking when I say this), have an average age of 31.5 years, 31.5!
But in spite of the older ages, this group may be the most accomplished group in NBA history. They have 5 MVPs, 55 All-Star Appearances, 4 Defensive Players of the Year, 4 Scoring Titles and 17 All-Defense Team Selections. Let’s compare this to the 2017-2018 Golden State Warriors 3 MVPs, 20 All-Star Appearances, 1 Defensive Player of the Years, 5 Scoring Titles and 7 All Defensive Team Selections.
As you can see, the accolades are not even close, but this isn’t a fair fight. This is a new team with more awards to win and much more games to play. Unlike the 2021-2022 Lakers, their best years on the court are way behind them, except for Anthony Davis though.
Also Anthony Davis is in the best stage of his career. LeBron stills looks like a Top-5 player, and Westbrook led the league in assists and is on his way of averaging a triple double for his 4th time! Carmelo is finding new life since coming off the bench and Dwight Howard well…he’s just being Dwight. I already talked about this but we know that AD and LeBron can win a championship with a decent team. Now with these new teams this could be a whole new super team.
But we know, just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean it’s going to work on the court. But while I’m writing this the Lakers are 0-6 in the pre-season so they have to get their act together if they want to pull this off.
