On LeBron the GM

The NBA Playoffs have started and, if you didn’t notice, the Lakers are not in them. They didn’t even come particularly close, getting eliminated from the play-in round with a couple games left in the season. And nobody is really missing them…

Going into the 2021-22 season, I really wanted the Russell Westbrook experiment to work out. For one, I like Westbrook—for all his faults, he’s a unique player who can be fun to watch at his best. Plus, any player who gets criticized as Not Clutch or Not Built for the Playoffs as often as Westbrook does is a victim of anti-labor smears and someone I feel the need to defend.

I also feel compelled, for reasons I can’t really explain, to defend LeBron James’ weird instincts as GM. In this case, I liked the idea of James building a team out of veterans who been written off as washed up or bad fits in the clubhouse—not just Westbrook, but Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard—who he liked playing with. So even though I had my doubts about the ability of these guys to play together, I was hopeful they’d make a deep playoff run.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. The Lakers finished 33-49, the worst record of any LeBron James team ever, including the 2019 Lakers team when James missed even more time due to injury and the team didn’t have Anthony Davis. Everything people said about Westbrook’s inability to play with LeBron—since both guys need the ball in their hands on offense—proved true. Even when LeBron and Davis were healthy, this Lakers team was not good. Now, they seem desperate to unload Westbrook, except no other team wants him and his terrible contract.

Even worse, there was a kind of Told You So glee that surrounded the Lakers’ collapse this season. Some of this was from the people who typically criticize Westbrook and LeBron. But by the end of the season, even I was rooting for the Lakers to miss the playoffs.

But why? How had my feelings about this team changed so dramatically?

I think it goes back to the very first newsletter I wrote, about sports as labor: Something that draws people to team sports is watching people work together. In basketball especially, the way players fit together brings out something beyond the abilities of the individuals in isolation. One thing about the “player empowerment era” that I think alienates some people is that it is premised on the idea that talent is everything. That if you just throw the best players in the world together, even if their skills are not really complementary, they will figure it out.

Last season, when the Nets traded for James Harden, many people felt that it wouldn’t work, despite all the talent. Sure, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden were all great players, but their skills overlapped too much. They all need the ball to be successful, and playing all three leaves you vulnerable on defense, and it just wouldn’t work. But, at least before the injuries, it did seem to work. The Nets really seemed able to just outscore everyone, and one sad thing about Harden and Irving getting hurt in the playoffs last year was that we could never test the hypothesis of whether they could have kept it going through the NBA Finals.

And then, of course, this Nets season was derailed by Irving’s vaccination status and Harden’s trade demands forcing him to Philadelphia. The personality pileup seemed to vindicate the initial skeptics, even if it was hard to tell from the results on the court.

But with the Lakers, there was no such ambiguity. The season was a total disaster, even when all of LA’s stars were healthy, because Westbrook, LeBron, and Davis just didn’t seem to fit together. So even though I like all those guys as players, I turned against the team because of what it said about LeBron the GM.

People have been critical of LeBron as the de facto GM of every team he’s on going all the way back to his first stint in Cleveland. The criticism gets wielded in debates about LeBron’s legacy, and in the interminable debates about LeBron vs. Jordan. I’m ambivalent about these criticisms, since they are so often used as a cudgel to discipline workers for complaining about management. People SHOULD have a say in the conditions of their job, including who they work with and how they are used.  

In LeBron’s case, the problem is really that he just doesn’t seem very good at it. Other than his four years in Miami, he’s never really been part of a stable core of teammates, and he seems to be perpetually yearning for new talent, rather than getting the best out of the teammates he has. His latest comments about wanting to play with Steph Curry are pretty typical—the guy just gets enamored with individual talent, while neglecting the construction of a whole team.

And, as this year’s Lakers team shows, teams that are not well-constructed are not fun to watch. It is not enough to just throw a bunch of talented players together and hope for the best, even if that’s kind of how LeBron has approached his teams. A player’s ability is not some raw material that be wrung from him no matter the situation—it is a by-product of his teammates and the system he’s playing in. This is true of all work, which is why ALL workers should be empowered, not just NBA All-Stars.