Even at 36-years-old, LeBron James stands as one of the NBA’s top players. He’s so good, in fact, that any team he’s on is an instant title contender.
At first glance, that certainly holds true for this season’s Lakers, a team with Bron, Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwight Howard (just to name a few).
But there is some doubt that this team is really good enough to win it all. Mostly, the doubt revolves around Russell Westbrook, whose fit with the team is questionable, at best.
According to Skip Bayless of FOX Sports, Russ’ presence is going to be the biggest reason for LeBron’s failure to capture a Ring this year.
“I have never seen a force of nature like Russell Westbrook. He is onto himself. He is a solo act. We’ve talked about how he has no conscience, he has no memory, no one’s ever held him accountable. He’s always gotten a triple-double pass for all the outrageously bad passes he throws because everybody’s in awe of averaging a triple-double in four of the last five years. And I’m in awe of it, too.
But it gets the team nowhere. He is wearing no. 0 as in Rings and I feel like he’s going to be, by far, the biggest reason LeBron can’t win this year’s Ring.”
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A 9x All-Star, 2x Scoring Champ, and former MVP, it’s certainly a hot take to suggest that he’s the reason LeBron won’t win a Championship, especially considering that LeBron James himself is the one who wanted him on the team.
“LeBron not gonna be able to walk this one out because they had a deal in place to go get Buddy Hield and he and AD wanted Russ,” said Shannon Sharpe in an episode earlier this month. “This is what you wanted. Rob Pelinka gave you Russ, they ran this by you. You wanted Russ, you got Russ.”
Needless to say, all eyes are on the Lakers. After a rough start to the season, it remains to be seen if they can turn things around and make it work with the pieces they have.
If anybody can pull it off, it’s LeBron James.
