Here’s a thought experiment. When the Lakers kick off the Western Conference Finals tonight, take one of the LA players not named LeBron James or Anthony Davis and insert that player onto an undermanned LBJ team of yore. Would they have won a championship? Weird, I know, but bear with me. For instance, let’s put Austin Reaves on the 2006-2007 Cleveland Cavaliers team. He’d instantly be either the second- or third-leading scorer. Do the Cavs beat the Spurs in that year’s Finals? Probably not—but I bet they don’t get swept, either. Try it again: how about Dennis Schröder on the 07-08 team? They probably get past the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with the German point guard serving as a better second option than Delonte West. And D’Angelo Russell alongside LeBron and Mo Williams in 08-09 would have probably threatened Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic more thoroughly, right?
The point here is not just that LeBron has played on some very, very bad teams, which he has. No, the idea is that this feels like the first time in LeBron James’ career that role players share the story of his playoffs in a positive way, and not as the only thing standing between him and more championships. These Laker role players aren’t good enough to carry a series, but it sure seems like there are enough of them to tag team as the team’s third star.
What really makes it all fun, though, is the delightfully renegade mentality that characterizes this starter/bench motley crew that defines this Lakers team. The Lakers don’t have a third star—they have a Randomly Rotating Third Star Crew, and it really seems to be working.
Each member of the group brings a unique edge—and, in almost perfect harmony, they seem to know when it’s time for each guy to step up and to play like a hero. Austin Reaves, the undrafted free agent who cut his teeth with the NCAA’s Wichita State Shockers before heading to the University of Oklahoma, seems to have his pasty white arms stuck in a permanent flexing position. From the beginning of the season through the end of November, Reaves was averaging seven points a game in just over 20 minutes. Now? People are debating whether or not the Lakers can afford to pay him this off-season. As crazy as it sounds, the guy whose agent plotted for him to go undrafted in hopes that the Lakers would snag him seems good for one or two brilliant games a series.
Then there’s Dennis Schröder, the pesky scoring guard who is widely regarded as one of the most annoying players in the NBA—unless he’s on your team. Schröder has found a home on this team thanks to his ability to come up with timely buckets and facilitate the offense. He’s also not without his own funny story: he famously bet on himself…and lost, engaging in contract negotiations with the Lakers during his first stint with the team and turning down an $80 million offer. He signed with Boston on a one-year deal for $5.9 million before being dealt to Houston. Now he’s back—and finally succeeding in a perfect role for his style.
Repeat Laker offender D’Angelo Russell was taken number two by the team in the 2015 draft, promptly caused a ruckus by posting a clip of Nick Young discussing his extramarital affairs, and then went on an NBA rumspringa: he spent two empty years in Brooklyn, took a cup of coffee with the Golden State Warriors, and eventually entered the purgatory that is the Minnesota Timberwolves. He seemed to have found his natural NBA resting place—but when the Lakers added him while dumping Russell Westbrook’s contract, he answered the call.
Then there’s the combination of Jarred Vanderbilt and Rui Hachimura, who are both fine individual players—but as one very large, four-armed lab experiment, have given the Lakers desperately needed competent wing defense and the occasional offensive outburst. Lonnie Walker IV, meanwhile, went from logging a DNP in the Warriors series to scoring all of his 15 points in the fourth quarter of a pivotal game four.
Walker’s moment might be the one that has so far defined the Lakers’ playoffs, and foreshadows what they’ll have to do in order to beat the Denver Nuggets and Nikola Jokic, who might be the best player in the world right now. The rise of the bench mob is amusing, to be sure, but the other guys’ excellence has a strategic component, too: their balling out allowed LeBron and AD to pace themselves, to have more of themselves to give later in the series.
So, as the conference finals kicks off, LeBron and AD will be there from night to night. But in order for the Lakers to make it to the NBA Finals, they’ll have to double down on the Randomly Rotating Third Star Crew, and hope that the chaotic reign of their squad vaults them to the NBA’s biggest stage.
