Can the Lakers win the NBA Championship?
By Space Coast Daily // September 8, 2020
Lakers finished 2019 season with 52-19 records
The Los Angeles Lakers finished the 2019-20 NBA regular season with the best record in the Western Conference at 52-19 and have some of the best NBA odds to win the Championship, but it seemed they were a different team once play restarted in Orlando at the end of July.
LeBron James and company only went 3-5 in the seeding round and, at one point, they lost three games in a row. Many doubted the franchise’s chances of winning the title despite looking consistently above average during the first months of the 2019-20 NBA season.
The Lakers have bounced back in the playoffs, though, and they currently sit in a 3-1 lead (at the time of writing) over the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the postseason.
It seems the Lakers have turned a corner in the playoffs, as James and Anthony Davis seem ready to carry the Lakers towards what promises to be a tough playoff run in the Western Conference.
With that in mind, it’s fair to wonder whether the Lakers are good enough to win the NBA title this season, a season that has been unique like no other.
The answer is simple. Yes, the Lakers are good enough to win the Championship this season. The Lakers have the star power, the coaching, and the depth — on both ends of the court — to make a title run in their first season as a playoff team since the beginning of the last decade.
The star power is obvious, and this team is going to go as far as LeBron and Davis can carry them.
The problem for the rest of The Association is that the duo of James and AD is virtually unstoppable when both are in sync.
LeBron led the NBA in assists — at 35 years old — with 10.2 dimes per game, but he also averaged 25.3 points and 7.8 rebounds per game. He is one of the favorites to win the 2019-20 NBA MVP Award, simply because no player in league history had shown his levels of excellence and dominance at such an advanced age.
Davis, on the other hand, was one of the best two-way players in The Association — he averaged 26.1 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.0 blocks and 1.5 steals per game. Few players in the league can impact the game on both sides of the ball as well — and as consistently — as he does. That’s a luxury the Lakers can’t waste.
Davis and LeBron can’t win the title on his own, though. Every title-winning franchise has had depth on both sides of the court, and the Lakers are not the exception.
They have quality shooting in Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, while Green can also thrive as a top-tier defender on the perimeter.
Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee offer size and length in the paint, and both players have complemented well with Davis near the rim.
Perhaps one of the biggest issues for the Lakers has been the absence of a “third star player” to back LeBron and Davis, but Kyle Kuzma has shown flashes of being that guy.
Kuzma’s biggest strength is his scoring ability and, even though his numbers have decreased slightly from his first two years in the league, he can be an effective threat while operating as a mismatch on offense — he is too big for small forwards and too quick for power forwards to handle.
The Lakers still have to get past teams such as the Houston Rockets and the public betting favorite, Los Angeles Clippers solely to reach the NBA Finals, where teams like the Toronto Raptors, the Milwaukee Bucks, or the Boston Celtics could be waiting for them.
It’s not going to be easy, but the Lakers have all the tools needed to win the title this season. They have shown it during the entire regular season and now need to back it up in the playoffs, where it matters the most.
If you want to keep up with the NBA and see if the Lakers have what it takes to win it all check out BetQL’s NBA dashboard to see every game if the experts are on their side.
