Lakers' biggest LeBron James problem was extremely obvious all along

Golden State Warriors v Los Angeles Lakers | Harry How/GettyImagesWe may have underestimated how important LeBron James is to the Los Angeles Lakers. Okay, that's hard to do because everyone knows how valuable LeBron is to every team he's ever played on. But in the Lakers' season debut against the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night, the Lakers got a monstrous game from Luka Doncic (43/12/9), and efficient 26 points and 9 assists from Austin Reaves, and a double-digit loss.

That's not great. And it may have proved that the main thing Lakers fans feared — that the team has a pretty low ceiling whenever LeBron is sidelined — might be true. Of course, there are numerous other reasons the…