LeBron James didn’t want to say what he thinks the Los Angeles Lakers need to do this offseason in order to improve their title chances after losing in the first round to the Minnesota Timberwolves, opting to plead the fifth when asked on Wednesday.
Paul Pierce, on the other hand, knows what the Lakers must do next in order to become a title contender: move on from James.
“You have to get out of the constraints of the LeBron Era,” Pierce said on Thursday’s “Speak.” “He’s just had a grasp of the whole organization, bear-hugging them, for so long now. He’s done some wonderful things for the Lakers’ organization. They’re probably going to build a statue of LeBron in front of Crypto, Staples or whatever y’all call it.
“But they have to say, ‘LeBron, we appreciate your services. I think we should move on.’ It’s a tough conversation.”
While Pierce’s idea might come off as a surprise, his reasoning is quite simple.
“It’s time for the Luka [Doncic] Era,” Pierce said. “I don’t know if you can play them together moving forward because you have to have a certain type of team around Luka to win. With him and LeBron, I don’t know if you’d be able to create that.”
When the Lakers landed Doncic in the surprise trade with the Dallas Mavericks in February, there was some belief that the deal marked a changing of the guard in Los Angeles. Doncic, 26, has been one of the game’s top emerging stars since the turn of the decade, being named first-team All-NBA in five straight years before this season. He also led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals last season. James, meanwhile, turned 40 in December and has only led the Lakers past the first round once since their title win in 2020.
But Los Angeles climbed the Western Conference standings following the Doncic trade. It won nine of its first 11 games with Doncic in the starting lineup before its momentum came to a halt when James suffered a groin injury in early March. Still, the Lakers were able to get the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference.
However, the James-Doncic pairing wasn’t able to work out in the postseason. The Timberwolves eliminated the Lakers in five games, with Los Angeles ranking 12th in offensive rating (109.1) and defensive rating (116.7) among the 16 teams in the postseason.
While the star duo put up big numbers in the first-round series (James averaged 25.4 points per game; Doncic averaged 30.2 points per game), their play notably took a dip in the fourth quarter throughout the series. The Lakers were outscored by 29 points in the fourth quarter in the final three games of the series and they shot just 29% from the field in the fourth quarter during the series.
Pierce didn’t offer up a trade idea for James, but he has a $52.6 million player option for next season. James was non-committal about his future when asked following Wednesday’s Game 5 loss.
“I don’t know. I don’t have an answer to that,” James told reporters. “Something I’ll sit down with my family, my wife and my support group and kind of just talk through it and see what happens. And just have a conversation with myself on how long I want to continue to play. I don’t know the answer to that right now, to be honest. So we’ll see”
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