After a loss to the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the NBA Playoffs this past season, the Los Angeles Lakers were looking to improve their roster by adding an impact player during free agency. That plan failed, with all of their top targets signing elsewhere. It was obviously pretty terrible news for the Lakers as they will now be entering the season with largely the same roster, and LeBron James offered his reaction to the situation.
During a recent interview, LeBron James was asked about the team’s failed attempts to sign an impact player during free agency. And he admitted that sometimes, things just don’t work out the way you would hope.
“It takes two to tango,” James told ESPN. “I think our front office, our coaching staff, they tried to do the job that they wanted to do or tried to get guys to come, and it didn’t happen. And that’s OK. That’s part of the business. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that sometimes it happens, sometimes it don’t.
“So, we don’t sit here and lie about or cry about it. We move on. And Klay’s a great player. Obviously, DeMar’s a great player. Valanciunas was one of those guys who ended up going to Washington, was someone that was in talks with us, but we move on to see how we continue to get better.”
But James seems to think the Lakers can contend even though they didn’t land a high-value free agent.
“Of course,” James said. “Because we’ve done it before. We’ve done it before, and we still have two guys who commit every single day with myself and AD [Anthony Davis]. We commit to excellence and commit to win. And we feel like any situation, any given year, we can put ourselves in a position to be able to succeed. And we’re not that far off.
“We were one year removed from the Western Conference finals. Obviously, this year it didn’t go as well this past year. Didn’t go as well as we would like, but we’re not that far off.”
We’ll have to see whether or not that proves to be the case.
