The Los Angeles Lakers‘ roster looks at least a little better right now than it did when they were shoved out of the first round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games.
At that time, they were dealing with a massive hole at the center position and a bench that was very anemic on the offensive end. To address those weaknesses, they signed center Deandre Ayton, who has been criticized for his lack of zeal on the defensive end but has career averages of 16.4 points on 59% field-goal shooting and 10.5 rebounds a game. They also brought in sharpshooting forward Jake LaRavia, former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart and rookie forward Adou Thiero.
Some feel the Lakers could therefore be a dark-horse team in the Western Conference this coming season. But longtime NBA reporter David Aldridge isn’t feeling that optimism. He ranked 29 of the league’s 30 teams (he exempted the Golden State Warriors) by how they did this offseason in a recent article for The Athletic, and he placed L.A. at No. 24 while citing the loss of forward Dorian Finney-Smith as one reason for the low ranking.
“We’ll see if Ayton can still be a major difference maker after flaming out in Phoenix and Portland,” Aldridge wrote. “Similarly, Smart isn’t what he was in Boston, but many advanced stats show he’s still one of the better defensive guards in the league – and he’s better defensively than anyone else L.A. can roll out. Losing DFS, though, is a blow.”
The Lakers will certainly miss Finney-Smith, especially since he helped turn their season around when they acquired him in a late December trade with the Brooklyn Nets. He gave them the type of 3-and-D wing they had lacked, and his ability to guard multiple positions on the perimeter helped them claim the third seed in the Western Conference.
He opted to join the Houston Rockets, a team most consider a legitimate contender now that it has future Hall of Fame forward Kevin Durant.
But Smart could help replace at least some of the effective wing defense Finney-Smith brought, and LaRavia shot a higher rate from 3-point range (42.3%) than Finney-Smith (41.1%), albeit on significantly lower volume. A number of players for Los Angeles have some upward potential, and therefore, the team as a whole has the ability to prove its doubters wrong.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: The Athletic writer ranks Lakers’ offseason among worst in NBA
