Rich Paul is not sugarcoating where he believes the Los Angeles Lakers stand in the championship picture, even as they sit near the top of the Western Conference. The Klutch Sports CEO made it clear he does not view this version of the Lakers as a title-ready roster.
Paul did not leave much room for misinterpretation, delivering a blunt assessment of Los Angeles’ chances:
“I personally don’t think the Lakers are good enough to be contenders, not right now,” Paul said on the debut episode of the Game Over podcast with Max Kellerman. “I don’t think they have enough to get to WCF, I don’t think they have enough to contend from that perspective right now… When you have the talent up top, those guys can win games… But then, things start to really, when you come to the back half of the season where guys have their conditioning, they’re in rhythm, they’re scouting you different, it’s one thing. Then when you go into the playoffs, we saw last year, they ran into athleticism and length and they struggled. So when you look at it now, athleticism, length, shooting, speed, right? Because now, can the Lakers play fast? I don’t think so. And style of play. That style of play is gonna be very easy to guard when you get into playoffs… They’re not a better team than Denver, [Houston] has athletes…I think there’s a couple changes to be made in short-term, and the long. In the short, I’m putting LeBron as the screener because no offense to Ayton or Jaxson Hayes, they’re just not the decision-maker coming out of the pick-and-roll… But now all you need in that case, we’ve seen it, the guy in the dunker’s spot and then the guy in the short corner, if they make shots, then you’re very tough to beat. Some teams may just switch it, but it depends on who’s guarding [LeBron]. You have to have two really good defenders on your team in order to just switch LeBron and Luka pick-and-roll.”
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