Grading LeBron James, Lakers' Top Stars to Open 2021-22 NBA Season
The Los Angeles Lakers have rarely, if ever, resembled NBA championship threats over the first two weeks of the 2021-22 season.
Still, you can see how this club could get there.
The Lakers have their issues—depth and defense top the list—but they also have a special collection of stars. Anthony Davis, LeBron James and Russell Westbrook may not be a perfect match for one another, but their combined elite credentials are hard to argue against.
How have the on-paper juggernauts performed in reality? We'll examine each star and assign a letter grade to his early performance.
Anthony Davis
1 of 3
The best version of The Brow is a top-five talent. He is unguardable on offense and impenetrable on defense.
The Lakers have seen a few glimpses of that player this season. He has already engineered three 30-point outbursts, three games with at least a baker's dozen boards and four games with at least three rejections.
He doesn't always impact the stat sheet that dramatically, which has been part of the rub with Davis in the past. He can sometimes seem to float, and it's easier to get lost with James and Westbrook splitting touches. Davis' bigger issue has always been injuries, though, and—knock on wood—he has luckily avoided them so far.
It would help if he could his old three-ball (3-of-20 this season), but good things almost always happen when he's in the game and great things come around with a good deal of frequency.
Grade: A-minus
LeBron James
2 of 3
James is always a tricky evaluation, because of the impossibly high standards he has set. Whether measured against his own legendary past or that of the ghost from the Windy City, he is at a place where all-time greatness is the expectation.
He isn't quite at that level. He's still awesome (24.8 points, 7.0 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game) because his skills remain absurdly sharp for a 36-year-old, but time might finally be catching up to him a bit.
That or his imperfect fit with Westbrook is plaguing his production. Or some of Column A and more of Column B.
Either way, he is averaging fewer points (24.8) and shooting a worse percentage (46.7) than he has since his rookie season. He's also averaging the least amount of free-throw attempts of his career (3.8) and posting his second-worst conversion rate inside of three feet (64.9), per Basketball-Reference. Whether that reflects a loss of explosion or is the result of having the lane clogged by Westbrook isn't clear, but it's holding back his production.
Grade: B
Russell Westbrook
3 of 3
Individually, Westbrook is close to the player he has always been.
Considering he's splitting touches with James and Davis, Westbrook's numbers are pretty incredible. While he has only tallied one triple-double for the Lakers, he flirts with his signature stat line on a nightly basis (19.4 points, 8.8 rebounds and 8.5 assists).
But his outside jumper has never looked worse (21.9 percent), and his free-throw shooting is nearing red-alert levels (58.1). The Lakers look more wonky when he's on the court, and the numbers say the issues go beyond that. L.A. is a whopping 11.5 points worse per 100 possessions with him than without, per NBA.com.
Other than the dramatic net differential, though, this has mostly been the Westbrook experience that Lakers fans were—or should have been—expecting.
Grade: C-minus
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