LeBron James was pretty bummed when Luka Dončić missed a free-throw with 3:05 remaining in Friday’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. It meant that Dončić’s second free throw would only take him to 49 points, and with the game in hand, he was removed before he could score his 50th. That 50-point marker is rare and special in the NBA. It only happened 18 times last season, and is worth celebrating. When Dončić came up short, the Lakers probably envisioned a pretty long wait before their next chance.
That wait lasted all of two days.
With Dončić sidelined due to injury along with almost 60% of the total Laker payroll against the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, Austin Reaves exploded for the best game of his career: 51 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists and a badly-needed 127-120 victory with Dončić set to miss at least a week.
Luka Dončić injury: Lakers superstar to miss at least a week with left finger sprain, leg contusion
Jasmyn Wimbish
Last season, only one team, the Denver Nuggets, had multiple players reach 50 points in a game. The Lakers are a single free-throw away from getting there in their first three games. Oh, and in their season opener, Dončić scored 43. That means the Lakers own the three highest-scoring regulation games by individual players so far in the 2025-26 season.
These aren’t exactly outlier performances, either. Reaves scored 26 points in the opener and 25 against Minnesota while taking a backseat to Dončić. He averaged just under 23 points per game from February onward last season, and his growth as a professional has been somewhat linear. In four NBA seasons, he’s gone from 7.3 to 13 to 15.9 to 20.2 points per game.
His assist numbers have ballooned in similar fashion. He has 29 through three games. We’re dealing with a tiny sample for the 2025-26 season, of course, and it’s obviously been skewed by all of the injuries the Lakers have dealt with. But this is a pretty logical progression based on how Reaves has developed throughout his entire career. He looks ready to compete for an All-Star selection. Dončić is an MVP candidate whose credentials speak for themselves. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that the Lakers could have the NBA’s best offensive backcourt.
So, that’s what they’ve gotten out of the players who have been healthy. Now we have to address the player who hasn’t.
The expectation for James’ season debut is mid-November as he recovers from sciatica. Historically speaking, though, he likes to hit the ground running. When he returned from his longest absence last season, seven games in March, he played 31 minutes and took 16 shots in his return. When he’s back, he’ll be back. There probably isn’t going to be an easing-in period for the Lakers to tinker with. They’re probably going to have to figure out his role in advance.
And that’s where things start to get a bit complicated. James has the sixth-highest career usage rate in NBA history. He’s led his team in 19 of his 22 NBA seasons, and when he hasn’t, he’s deferred to Hall of Famers: 2011 Dwyane Wade, 2017 Kyrie Irving, and Dončić last season. That has historically been the proper course of action. If you have LeBron James on your team, why on Earth would you give the ball to anyone else?
Well, this Laker team offers the first set of compelling reasons to do so. For one thing, he’ll be 41 in December. How many quadragenarians not named LeBron James have you ever seen occupy a significant possession-share within a successful NBA offense? Skinny Luka looks downright unstoppable. Reaves isn’t far behind. That was a reasonable expectation coming into the season, because the value they provide is almost exclusively offensive.
That isn’t the case for James. LeBron is so good with the ball in his hands that we often neglect how great he is at everything else. If he wanted to be a supercharged version of Draymond Green, he’d have no trouble doing so. He’s an elite screener and passer, and when he wants to be a killer defender, he’s more than capable of doing so — at least for short stretches. Those are traits the Lakers need far more than on-ball offense. Dončić and Reaves seemingly have that specific area under control.
The optimal version of this Laker team, therefore, is one in which James takes a bit of a backseat offensively. He’s still LeBron James. He’ll still score 18-20 points per night because, well, good luck preventing him from doing so. But more of those points will probably come in transition and off of spot-ups than more direct pick-and-roll creation. James himself has even acknowledged this to an extent.
“I spent a lot of time on my catch-and-shoot 3-pointers,” James said at media day. ” … Understanding how can I make the most of when I don’t have the ball, either moving into space. Obviously, Luka and AR [Austin Reaves] going to do a lot of time handling the ball. …We have a lot of guys that can handle the ball, so how can I still be effective on a team where I don’t have to handle the ball as much?”
JJ Redick has been talking about this since before even the Dončić trade.
“LeBron is one of the smartest players and I think using him as a screener and finding ways to get him the ball in specific spots on the floor where he can be a facilitator and scorer, that’s what I mean by being off the ball,” he explained on the Lowe Post podcast in September of 2024.
The groundwork has been laid for this transition for some time. James hardly ever took catch-and-shoot 3s in Miami or Cleveland, but his volume ticked up pretty meaningfully after he signed with the Lakers. It peaked in 2022 and 2023, when he needed to do so to accommodate Russell Westbrook and took as many as 3.5 of them per game. That number has dipped a bit in the ensuing seasons, but the 2.9 he took per game last season still represented a meaningful jump over any of his pre-Laker seasons during the tracking era. Considering he made 42% of them a year ago, it’s an adjustment he’s equipped to make if he’s really prepared to embrace it.
But that’s the question here. LeBron James has been LeBron James for so long that truly adjusting to playing a different sort of basketball is going to be tricky. When Darvin Ham tried to limit his minutes to preserve his body during the 2023-24 season, James played only 29 minutes on opening night. That’s as long as that effort lasted, as he immediately played 35 two nights later and averaged 35.3 for the season as a whole. James can play any conceivable role or style.. Getting him to embrace change has always been more of a struggle.
That’s understandable when you’re arguably the greatest player who’s ever lived, but it’s going to be one of the keys to this Laker season. When James opted into his contract this offseason, he made it clear that he wants to compete for championships in the twilight of his career. The best hope the Lakers have of doing so is trusting Dončić and Reaves to handle the offense while James takes care of the things they can’t.
They’re soaring to even greater offensive heights than the team hoped. But they’re never going to be high-level defenders, and most of their offensive value has to come with the ball in their hands. They’re limited. James isn’t. He can do practically anything, even if he can’t do it as often or as aggressively as he did in his youth. So as his younger teammates ascend, the key to his season will be getting comfortable with the idea of doing the things they can’t.
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