Lakers Luka is the LeBron Redux
The NBA is made up of 450 of the best basketball players in the world. Most of the time, you have specialists - passers, scorers, rebounders, shot blockers - that fill the necessary roles. Over the past 80 years, we have seen stupendous specialists in all categories. Bob Cousy and Rajon Rondo, for instance, are two players from the same franchise that are two of the best passers the game has ever seen. There are shot makers and shooters going back to legendary Los Angeles Laker Gail Goodrich, brute rebounders and interior defenders like Wes Unseld, all-time stealth defenders like Alvin Robertson and Michael Ray Richardson, Swiss Army knives like Dennis Rodman.
Rosters ideally were and are formed with one or two star players and accessory role guys. Take a wide view of the NBA and its history, and every now and then you get the player that can do it all, the guy so great that he does whatever his team needs - either on both ends of the floor or so sublime on offense that the defense is non-essential.
Go back 40 years to a decade that has a generational connective tissue to the current era, and you start with Michael Jordan, whose hardwood exploits, thirst for winning, and marketability in the midst of the media boom changed not just the NBA but professional sports. Jordan's connective tissue linked with the presence and star power of Shaquille O’Neal (drafted in 1993), who was the modern fan’s version of Wilt Chamberlain, the most dominant. There was Kobe Bryant, drafted in 1996, who provided the even younger modern fan with a taste of what Jordan was like.
In Jordan’s final season of 2002-03, Bryant was 24 years old. O’Neal was 30. Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett were 26. Jordan’s retirement signaled another generational connective tissue passed on, which was inherited by the aforementioned quartet of stars in this paragraph.
In that June of 2003, another connective tissue was born, which provided an additional link.
When LeBron James was drafted No.1 overall in 2003 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, he had expectations of excess surrounding him. A high schooler whose interviews at the time placed him in the same sentences with Chamberlain and Jordan. The Cavs won 35 games in James' rookie season, an 18-game improvement from 2002-03. Two seasons later, they won 50. Then, in 2006-07, they won 50 and the Eastern Conference.
The historically-aware NBA fan will recall when James, in Game 5 of the 2007 first round against a seasoned Detroit Pistons team, charcoal-grilled the veteran roster by exploding for 48 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists on the road, including scoring 25 of his team’s final 29 points, in the 109-107 Cavaliers' win. It was James’ arrival, the 23-year-old’s coronation at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Such a performance provided a sterling example of one of those “every now and then” generational talents alluded to above.
In the 2023-24 season, Luka Doncic, then of the Dallas Mavericks, led the NBA in scoring with 33.9 points per game. He also averaged 9.8 assists and 9.2 rebounds, and led the NBA in both field-goals made (11.5) and attempted (23.6) per game. The Mavericks won 50 games. On their way to their first NBA Finals since 2011, they defeated the Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Minnesota Timberwolves before they lost in the Finals to the Boston Celtics in five games. Doncic, 25 years old, led all playoff players in points, rebounds, and assists, and led Games 1 and 2 of the Finals in scoring with 30 and 32 points. In 38.8 minutes per game, he averaged 29.2 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 5.6 assists on 47.2% shooting. Kyrie Irving, who played 58 games during that regular season, averaged 19.8 points in the series on 41.4% shooting.
Doncic’s excursion to the 2024 Finals was familiar, as it was not unlike James’ supreme stewardship of the Cavaliers to the 2007 Finals - a series where the Cavs were swept by the San Antonio Spurs.
In the midnight hour on Feb. 2, 2025, the Mavericks mystifyingly traded Doncic to the Lakers, getting a package surrounding perennial all-star Anthony Davis in return. The trade, which cost Mavericks GM Nico Harrison his job, paired Doncic with James, binding the old connective issue to the new. The Lakers finished that season with a 50-32 record, and in 2025-26 went 53-29. In their time together, the pairing of James and Doncic went 47-25 in the regular season and 1-4 in the postseason. This past summer, James left for the Philadelphia 76ers.
With James gone, the Lakers have fully embraced their next superstar. Not only does Doncic join a decorated list now of superstars to don Laker purple and gold - from West to Baylor to Chamberlain to Abdul-Jabbar to Shaq to Kobe and James - but he has allowed the franchise a seamless transition from an older James - who led the team to the 2020 championship at age 36 - to a younger version of James.
Just as Jordan provided the connective tissue for Bryant, James has provided the same for Doncic, whose current production level has put him with the all-time greats.
Doncic is doing what a young James did in terms of carrying, ball distribution, and making teammates better. As of this writing, the Lakers have the best record in the Western Conference at 11-2. Doncic is averaging 38.6 points (48.9% on 24.4 attempts), 7.6 assists, and 7.5 rebounds per game and is shooting 40.8% from 3-point range. His average is the most since Michael Jordan in 1986-87 (37.1), and bests both Kobe Bryant’s best scoring season (35.4 in 2005-06) and James Harden's (36.1 in 2018-19). Through the first eight games of this season, Doncic totaled 308 points, five more than Jordan did through eight games in 1988-89 - that season, Jordan averaged 32.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 8.0 assists per game, a season in which in late March into early April he ran off a streak of 10 triple-doubles in an 11-game span. Doncic’s 361 points through his first nine games this season was the most since Jordan’s 347 in the aforementioned 1986-87 season. Only Chamberlain, with 574 points through the first 11 in 1962-63 and 530 through 11 games in 1961-62, scored more in his first 11 games to open a season than Doncic has.
Doncic’s surrounding mates in the Lakers’ 123-112 win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Nov. 12 were Austin Reaves, Matisse Thybulle, Jake LaRavia, and Walker Kessler. Reaves is your wing scorer. His 24.7 points per game, through 13 games, is a career best. Thybulle is your defender. LaRavia does a little bit of everything, and Kessler is the rebounder, the lob threat. Doncic scored 32 points in 32 minutes in the game.
From 2020-24, Doncic made five consecutive All-NBA 1st teams and All-Star teams. He has two scoring titles and was the 2019 Rookie of the Year. What has eluded Doncic so far has been the NBA's Most Valuable Player award. If he keeps up this level of play, there is no reason why he will not have the award at season’s end. Not unlike James, not unlike Jordan in 1988-89 and any season, Doncic can have any accessory players around him and make them succeed. It is the special quality that allowed James to be flanked by Larry Hughes (a wing defender), Mo Williams (a scorer), Donyell Marshall, J.R. Smith, and Kyle Korver (3-point specialists), and centers Zydrunas Ilgauskas (fundamental) and Tristan Thompson (rugged rebounder) at different points in his career and still have success.
The Lakers signed James in 2018 when he was 34. The next summer, Davis was dealt to the Lakers to pair with James and quickly ascend the Lakers just three years after Bryant’s final NBA campaign. Two seasons after James’ arrival and one year after the Davis trade, the pair delivered the franchise a championship. Bryant to James, another connective tissue. The Lakers acquired Doncic at age 25, when James was 41. Bryant-to-James-to-Doncic. Connective tissue.
The Lakers have transitioned from James without the struggle that some franchises go through when they lose an all-time great - like the woeful Windy City days that the Chicago Bulls endured in waiting 11 years after Jordan’s 1998 retirement to land their next star, Derrick Rose, and then having to wait 10 more years for their next star, rookie sensation Caleb Wilson.
The Lakers, in short time, have their new LeBron.
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