When in a recent ESPN Survey Of 20 Coaches not one coach listed Lakers forward LeBron James as a Top 3 player in the NBA. Two of the players listed in the Top 3 have never won a championship or even performed well in the conference finals. Certainly all NBA players are better at basketball than the general population so any list of the top players in the NBA will leave off some great players. Though it would be interesting to see how many coaches in the ESPN survey would choose two out of the top three players they selected over LeBron James to lead their team instead of LeBron in the playoffs.
Now some basketball pundits would separate the regular season from the playoffs and say that LeBron is great in the playoffs but he is not a Top 3 player in the league when you consider the regular season. That's hog wash! The regular season only brings out measured efforts from the top players. The term "load management" has become popular for usage of playing time for NBA players. Even with injuries LeBron hit his career averages during the regular season last year, which averages were better than two of the Top 3 players listed ahead of him on the ESPN coaches survey. So while LeBron's playoff abilities are indisputable his regular season numbers are at Least Top 3 also.
With the 2019-20 Lakers team that will surround him LeBron and the Lakers, will be back in the playoffs, and his playoff performance will be such that no coach who gets knocked out of the playoffs by the Lakers will be saying that they got beat by a team without any Top 3 NBA players on it. That brings us to the next questionable part of the ESPN coaches survey results where the Lakers were not listed by anyone to come out of the West to play in the NBA Finals. One team listed instead of the Lakers has never been out of the second round of the playoffs. None of the other three teams listed have come out of the West in the last two decades. It's strange that the Lakers with LeBron and Anthony Davis got zero votes among the coaches surveyed.
It's been a foregone conclusion among the media and many NBA front offices around the league that the Lakers are disorganized, if not dysfunctional. But which other front office accomplished as much as the Lakers did in the off season?They had to give up value in order to get Anthony Davis in a trade with a team (and probably the league) that didn't want to see the trade happen. Then when pushed up against the July 6th deadline because of the delay in the trade they couldn't make for Kawhi Leonard they still pulled off signing valuable pieces for their team that, despite what the coaches surveyed said, will be competing for a championship.
Needless to say the Lakers front office is no more dysfunctional than the other NBA team front offices who have coaches that left LeBron James out of the list of the Top 3 players in the league, and who had no votes for the Lakers coming out of the West. The upcoming NBA season should be one for ages. Lots of things will be settled. Can't wait for the NBA season to get started!