LOS ANGELES — The path the Los Angeles Lakers have chosen, in all its unavoidable awkwardness, fully unveiled itself Tuesday night against a team all too familiar with the pain that multiple timelines can cause.
The situation the Lakers find themselves in at the start of the 2025-26 season — a year that began with a 119-109 loss to the Golden State Warriors that felt more lopsided than that — isn’t a full-on Rob Lowe/Rob Pelinka-level lookalike. But the strains the Warriors faced and the Lakers are about to undergo are similar, with micro-fractures existing at every step that isn’t in complete unison.
For the two-timeline Warriors, it was juggling an infusion of first-round draft picks who could, hopefully, be franchise cornerstones. Those issues were manageable enough that the franchise was able to win a title in 2022 even if the after-effects lingered all the way into this summer’s negotiations with Jonathan Kuminga.
The Lakers’ problem — and to be fair, we can’t be totally sure how much of a “problem” it’ll end up being — is much more urgent.
On Tuesday as they began their season, Luka Dončić greeted the crowd from midcourt pregame. He was easily the Lakers’ best and most important player — 43 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists in nearly 41 minutes to start a year in which plenty of people believe he can win his first Most Valuable Player.
The franchise leaned into its future throughout the opener. Fans sang “I Want It That Way” during one timeout in a nod to Dončić’s favorite boy band and the team’s trip to Las Vegas to celebrate his contract extension with the Lakers. Dončić addressed fans before the game, promising an “exciting year.”
The future is, in fact, exciting. Lakers governor Jeanie Buss sat courtside next to Mark Walter, the team’s soon-to-be majority owner. And at halftime, Walter chatted with LA Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell, a reminder that his other high-end property is four wins away from a World Series title.
Dončić delivered on that promise, too. He was sensational on both ends of the court, showing how his trimmed-down frame and strong EuroBasket performance would translate to his full-time club.
That was the biggest reason for optimism this season.
But when a performance like that wasn’t good enough for the Lakers to win, well, that’s an issue.
And while Dončić, and to a lesser extent Austin Reaves, did their thing in the opener, glaring flaws emerged. The Lakers weren’t athletic enough. The Lakers weren’t well-positioned enough. The Lakers weren’t connected enough.
The best solution to those problems sat on the end of their bench Tuesday in a dark suit, stoically watching opening night for the first time in his career while he literally sipped tea. LeBron James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, is very much still here, too, and his absence in the opener was undoubtedly felt.
LeBron James could only watch from the bench in a suit as he missed the Lakers’ opener while dealing with sciatica. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Before the game, Lakers coach JJ Redick was asked about moving forward in the short term without James, who is out for at least a handful of weeks as he deals with a sciatic nerve issue. In reality, this version of the Lakers can’t even truly miss James because they haven’t been with him on the court yet.
“Oftentimes, when you are playing without one of your best guys, it’s not necessarily right at the beginning of the season,” Redick said. “He hasn’t practiced with the team yet. Our group is comfortable with what the group is right now. And we need all guys to star in their roles. I don’t think that changes if LeBron is in the lineup or if he’s out of the lineup.”
During the game, no matter how hard Redick or the Lakers tried, they couldn’t operate the way they need to without James.
“It’s hard to forget about LeBron,” Redick said. “The reality is, when you’re focused on the group that you have, you gotta make that group work. Sometimes you can just be like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re gonna get LeBron back at some point.’ Like, it’s awesome, but you are focused.
“I’ll be honest with you, I did have one moment in that first half when we had a few possessions, couldn’t score against the zone, I (thought), ‘That’d be great to have LeBron just to throw it to the high post.’”
Even at 40 years old, James is still one of the Lakers’ most dynamic athletes, a statement that’s both a marvel considering his experience and a real problem considering the healthy players available. He’s also one of the game’s most gifted connectors and an unquestioned basketball genius — another high-powered brain that could be unleashed in real time to solve the shortcomings an imperfect team like the Lakers will encounter.
“You’ve got to do what you think is best to help the team win. And I feel like that’s what we did tonight. We came up short, but obviously, when you’re missing a guy like Bron, you’re not gonna fill that with one person,” Reaves said. “You have to try to fill that … I need to do something a little better. Luka needs to do something a little better, Rui (Hachimura)’s got to pitch in a little more.
“If I were LeBron James, s—, I probably would have retired by now. Yeah, he’s one of the greatest players to ever touch a basketball. So you have to do it as a collective group.”
In reality, it’s probably going to be on Dončić and Reaves to do as much as they can to level up the players around them, starting with center Deandre Ayton. Ayton, who has said all the right things about sacrificing and wanting to win and play meaningful basketball, still has to find a rhythm as a screener and as a roller with the Lakers’ ballhandlers. Both Dončić and Reaves said they have to do a better job finding ways to maximize the former No. 1 pick. And Dončić, as recently as this summer, elevated his undermanned Slovenian national team to the EuroBasket quarterfinals.
“Have to do a better job, just talking to him, like what I want, what he wants,” Dončić said of his work with Ayton, who finished with 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting. “And I mean, today was on me, not getting him enough touches, probably. Gotta help him.”
Dončić expressed no signs of panic. He said whatever he felt on the inside of his leg late in Tuesday’s game wasn’t a big deal.
“My confidence was good,” he said. “I think there was a lot of positive things tonight, obviously a lot of things that we need to work on, especially third quarter. We got to figure that out. But my confidence was fine.”
Opening-night proclamations are a trap that has ensnared analysis and takes for years. The Lakers, as everyone in the organization has seemingly embraced, committed to big-picture goals even if they come with short-term hurdles.
Still, the reminder of how important James is to all of this has to get the organization’s attention — a reminder that the championship season they want Dončić to lead them to will require more help than he had Tuesday.
In Game 1 for the Lakers, we saw how good Dončić can be. And we also saw that without James, the Lakers won’t be good enough.
