In September of 2019, Bill Simmons laughed at the ridiculousness of the Lakers roster, which he called “thrown together” without “any rhyme or reason.”
“The Lakers team is a really strange team,” Simmons said. “I’m not gonna say they’re gonna miss the playoffs, but I just kinda wanna how how all those pieces work. I think it’s one of the weirdest rosters we’ve had in a long time.
Like, go look at that Lakers roster…It looks like my 11-year-old just picked players on 2K and threw them on a roster together. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t understand what that roster is.
On yesterday's Lowe Post podcast, @billsimmons had some thoughts on the Lakers https://t.co/6EH30690TI pic.twitter.com/P10mJIGnno
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) September 5, 2019
To Simmons’ credit, the Lakers do have a weird ensemble of players. Outside of LeBron and AD, they’ve got JaVale McGee, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, KCP, Rajon Rondo, Alex Caruso, Avery Bradley, and Quinn Cook. Besides the fact that a lot of these players are either flawed or past their prime, the doubts about their potential were, at least at the time, justified.
In fact, had it not been for the superhuman abilities of the James/Davis duo, who knows where they would have fallen in the standings?
Nevertheless, they stand at the end of it all as NBA Champions after a dominant showing in the 2020 playoffs and you can bet that, no matter how the roster looks next campaign, nobody will be laughing about their chances to repeat.
