Although it seems like a team with both LeBron James and Anthony Davis should be good enough to win a championship next to a trio from your local 24 Hour Fitness, it turns out you actually need real NBA players to let superstars do their thing, especially when you’re down to just one of them at a time. So while it’s fair to say there are good lineups within the construction of this Lakers team, the reality is that they’ve scarcely played together.
So while yes, injuries to LeBron and AD have been the biggest impediment to the team’s chances of winning games on a night-to-night basis, it’s not just their absences that have hurt.