The Lakers are the NBA’s sideshow (Hot Takes We Might Actually Believe)

The 2024-25 NBA season is here. We take our annual trip too close to the sun, daring you to stand the swelter of these views. This is Hot Takes We Might Actually Believe.

When Los Angeles Lakers teammates LeBron and Bronny James became the first father-son duo in NBA history, ESPN posted side-by-side photos to social media of the two of them from both 2004 and 2024.

The caption read, “Time flies.”

News flash: It does not. And that is actually what makes this achievement so remarkable.

Facebook was a fledgling company when Bronny was born in October 2004. YouTube did not exist. The iPhone would not be invented for another three years. Instagram debuted in 2010. This was forever ago.

But every moment between them is now another opportunity to remind us that, yes, LeBron and Bronny are teammates. Did you hear about the time LeBron drove baseline on his son? Or the time Bronny made a 3-pointer over his dad? Sure you did, because both became headlines the moment we learned of each.

If you are already tired of keeping up with the Jameses, imagine how the Lakers feel. Do not get me wrong: It will be extremely cool to see LeBron and Bronny share a court for the first time in the regular season. It will be fun to see a father’s first assist to his son. That novelty is fleeting — for us, not them.

But the Lakers will be asked in every city about every development between father and son, good or bad. And it will become a burden if it is not already. The feel-good story will not feel so good when, for example, they are asked about Bronny’s movement to and from the G League as the losses mount under first-year head coach JJ Redick. Or when LeBron has to rest a sore left ankle. Or when D’Angelo Russell is benched.

That is right: The Lakers are a sideshow. They have no chance to win a championship, and yet they will be the sport’s biggest story — even bigger than last season, when they lost in the first round of the playoffs.

Remember, LeBron turns 40 years old in December. He gets to play with his son because, by season’s end, he will likely have played more minutes in the NBA than anyone ever has. He is still really good, a third-team All-NBA selection last season. His statistics — 26-7-8 on 54/41/75 shooting splits — remain remarkable. But, however slow it may be, there is no mistaking the recent decline he has experienced.

The Lakers’ 17th-rated defense last season reflected LeBron’s inability or unwillingness to consistently exert maximum effort on that end. The 71 games he played in 2023-24 were the exception to a rule that sidelined him for twice as many games per season over the previous four years. His advanced statistics in that four-year window are easily his worst since his rookie season, when he won 35 games at Bronny’s age.

Not by coincidence the Lakers have been in the play-in tournament in three of the past four years. They failed to make the postseason entirely in 2022. Last season ended in a five-game, first-round playoff exit.

And how did the Lakers respond to last season’s shortcomings? Not by making a single trade or free-agent signing but by adding a first-time head coach, the No. 17 overall pick in the draft and LeBron’s son.

Oh, and they handed James a two-year, $104 million extension that carries him through his 41st birthday.

FYI: Here are the first-year records of every head coach with no prior coaching experience:

• Steve Nash (48-24), lost in the second round

• Derek Fisher (17-65), failed to make the playoffs

• Steve Kerr (67-15), NBA champions

• Jason Kidd (44-38), lost in the second round

• Mark Jackson (23-43), failed to make the playoffs

• Vinny Del Negro (41-41), lost in the first round

• Isiah Thomas (41-41), lost in the first round

• Doc Rivers (41-41), failed to make the playoffs

• Larry Bird (58-24), lost in the conference finals

• M.L. Carr (33-49), failed to make the playoffs

• Quinn Buckner (13-69), failed to make the playoffs

• Magic Johnson (5-11), failed to make the playoffs

• Dan Issel (36-46), failed to make the playoffs

• Dick Van Arsdale (14-12), failed to make the playoffs

• Paul Silas (36-46), failed to make the playoffs

More often than not the team has gotten worse under its new head coach.

Maybe Redick is an exception. Russell told reporters that he sent Redick a text message from the golf course, thanking him for designing a play he had never seen before, which is a weird sentence to write. His admiration for the new coach has him wanting to play harder on defense than he ever has before.

Then again, Russell is in his 10th NBA season. He is who he is. And Redick, as far as I know, is not God.

Redick got defensive when asked how Rui Hachimura can “take that next step,” as if the sixth-year pro does not need to improve. In Redick’s eyes, Hachimura only needs be in better position to succeed, and maybe he is right. Or maybe thinking there are quick fixes to what has ailed these Lakers is madness.

Even if Redick represents an upgrade at the coaching position — and he very well might — there is no breezing by the fact that this team won a single playoff game last season in what were the best and healthiest seasons that LeBron and Anthony Davis have enjoyed since they won a title together in 2020.

The 76 games Davis played last season were a career high. What are the odds that someone who missed an average of 28 games per season from 2018-23 can avoid missing that kind of time again? The Lakers got the best seasons they could ask for from their two best players and still could not avoid an early exit.

When things get rough, and they will get rough — they always do over the course of an 82-game season — what do the rest of the Lakers make of a team that traded every available asset for LeBron’s preferred playing partner, hired his podcast co-host as their head coach and drafted his son in the second round?

LeBron is the Lakers’ culture, and he is about to be 40 years old. But he has Bronny, which means the highlight of their season will occur on opening night, before Los Angeles takes its sideshow on the road.