They won 47 games without Kawhi and now they add DeRozan in his place. I hate the fit with Aldridge and Murray, but they have good shooting with Belinelli and Bertans and I really wouldn’t put it past Popovich to coach the hell out of DeRozan on this team.

This makes predicting the Laker’s performance next year very hard. I can see them not playing very well, and being “uninspired” for most of the season. They could be like Minnesota, an apparently unhappy team. That would ceetainly put them in the bottom half of the playoffs. They have some young talent, but who knows how it will affect the play of that talent to have Lebron there. So I think they are likely to make the playoffs, but be worse than Houston, San Antonio, Golden State, OKC and probably Utah. There is a lot of uncertainty.

bonus: every western team except the Wolves and the tanking Kings, Mavs, Grizzlies and Suns went positive against the east last season.

My argument about the west being much stronger than the east is not so much about a 7 game series between the Lakers and any of those teams, but about the Lakers and Lebron playing 52 games against those western teams instead of 30. You might not be very high on the strength of those teams, but I’m sure anyone would win more games playing more games against the overall weaker conference. We were discussing the Lakers regular season record.

I wouldn’t be afraid of the Blazers, Spurs, Jazz, Clippers or the Nuggets if I was Lebron, but I sure as hell see more of a chance of them losing games in the regular season to those teams instead of the Pistons, Wizards, Bucks, Hornets, Bulls of the NBA. It shouldn’t change much on the top and on the bottom ends of each conference but it is very relevant for the regular season.

I didn’t like the Lakers’ offseason much (in particular I think letting Randle walk for peanuts was a catastrophe), but if you think of it as one big push to give LeBron a different kind of team than he had in Cleveland it kind of makes some sense.

Between LeBron LeBronning, Ball/Hart/Kuzma/Ingram all making at least some improvement, and my perhaps irrational feeling that LeBron will drag as much as there is to give out of Rondo/Lance/KCP/JaVale I think they’ll win around 47 games.

Who should the LeLakers be afraid of, other than the Dubs?

Anyone who thinks LeBron and Magic are throwing away this year is nuts. They are going to go all out to win with what they have.

It also wouldn’t surprise me if a Kawhi trade is engineered mid-season, once Kawhi has proven that he is healthy.

My guess would be somewhere between out of playoffs and the 4th seed. It’s the West after all.

Despite Lebron’s durability, last season was his first playing 82 games. It’s reasonable to expect him to miss some games and the Lakers roster sans Lebron is top lottery material.

Lebron will do his thing winning a lot of games by himself, but I belive the success of the season will rely on the development of the kids.

And with their positional flexibility (and a well of guys that want a shot at a chip on a one-year contract) they should be able to contend even if one or two of the young guys end up busts. We’ll see I guess.

EDIT: Beat me to it, Bruno.