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Greetings from Los Angeles again this week. I spent Monday night with an NBC mic in my hands working the sidelines of a surprisingly competitive game between the Spurs and the Kawhi Leonard–less Clippers. I’ve done a handful of interviews with Victor Wembanyama over the years, including this 2024 magazine cover story. But standing next to him at center court, having to reach up to get the microphone to him, that was a new experience. Can confirm: Wemby is very tall.
LeBron’s new Lakers role
Last week I posed the question: Should we be taking the Lakers more seriously? Los Angeles had won three straight games without LeBron James, who returned to the lineup Thursday channeling his inner Andre Iguodala, stuffing the stat sheet while shooting a tidy 53.8% from the floor. Let’s see how this plays out, I wrote. The Lakers had a tough home game against Denver on Saturday before heading out on a six-game road trip that began with a pair of games against a Rockets team nipping at L.A.’s heels.
Well, on Saturday, the Lakers outlasted the Nuggets, with James shooting 53.8%. On Monday they beat back the Rockets … with James shooting 53.8%. In three games since his return from injury, James has shot exactly 7 of 13 in each game, chipping in at least five assists and five rebounds in each one. Lakers coach JJ Redick has acknowledged the obvious, “That the best thing for our team is [James] being the third-highest-used player.”
As I wrote last week, this version of the Lakers, with Luka Dončić carrying the bulk of the scoring burden, Austin Reaves serving as the second option and James picking up the rest, can be dangerous come postseason. The Lakers are fifth in offensive rating over the last three games, per NBA.com. They are 12th in defensive rating. They have solidified their hold on the No. 3 seed which could mean a second-round series against inexperienced San Antonio instead of battle-tested Oklahoma City.
Credit James for this. Only a handful of superstars have successfully made the transition to lesser roles, and even fewer with the teams they were superstars on. James has embraced a different role in L.A. on the fly. And it may have opened the door for some unexpected success this season.
Jayson Tatum–Jaylen Brown debate
Interesting comments out of Boston from Jaylen Brown this week. The Celtics have won four of the five games Jayson Tatum has played in this season, with the one loss the game in San Antonio in which Brown was ejected in the second quarter. While the fit has appeared relatively seamless, Brown told reporters that successfully integrating Tatum has taken sacrifices from everyone—including him.
“It takes some humility, it takes some understanding,” Brown said. “I think JT is extremely important to us for what we want to do. Obviously, I’m having a great season, but then I have to just think, what’s the big picture? And sometimes that’s not easy, but I always put the team first and what the bigger picture is first.”
Celtics fans get triggered by the Tatum vs. Brown debate, as if the media is trying to pit them against each other (disclaimer: I am not). But this is Brown’s team, for this season at least, and to make it work he was going to have to sacrifice some offense. Consider: Brown averaged 24.5 shots per game in January. In February, it’s 22. In March, it’s ticked down to 17. He still has some scoring outbursts—the 41 points he scored against Phoenix on Monday, backed by 19 of 21 from the free throw line, is an example—but his unselfishness has allowed Tatum to ease his way back into the rotation. And Boston is better for it.
NBA expansion fee numbers
ESPN reported this week that the NBA would take the next step toward expansion at this month’s Board of Governors’ meeting, with Las Vegas and Seattle the front-runners to secure new NBA teams. No surprise there. The league has long been interested in returning to Seattle (I’d expect the Thunder to quickly give up all claims to the SuperSonics history when they do) and the NBA has been invested in Las Vegas for decades. I’m told the owners are hoping to extract a $10 billion expansion fee for each team, with prospective team owners already lining up.
Will NBA shorten its schedule?
While some may interpret Steve Kerr’s crusade to reduce the NBA’s schedule by 10 games as yelling into the wind, you would be surprised how much support Kerr has behind the scenes. Kerr is absolutely right, of course. The NBA season is too long, and the breakneck speed the game is played at makes players more susceptible to injury, regardless of what the NBA data says.
The financial component, an obstacle in roughly the same way the iceberg was an obstacle for the Titanic, is daunting, but it’s a challenge several team officials hope NBA commissioner Adam Silver takes head on. An argument I hear a lot is that the short-term financial pain teams will feel by a shortened schedule could be reversed in the long term if it increases the value of the regular season.
Teams will never be able to make up the ticket revenue but a more competitive league could be more valuable to broadcast partners when the NBA goes back to the table a decade from now. Any changes to the schedule have to be collectively bargained, of course, so nothing will happen until 2029, when both the league and players can opt out of its current agreement.
Carter Bryant’s full-circle Kawhi Leonard moment
Reported out a fun story this week on Carter Bryant, the Spurs rookie forward who has emerged as a fixture in San Antonio’s rotation over the last three months. Bryant is from Riverside, Calif., a town about an hour east of Los Angeles and the same town Kawhi Leonard grew up in. Bryant’s father, D’Cean, actually coached Leonard for two years at Martin Luther King High School. When Bryant was 4 years old he would go to the gym with them. As Leonard worked out on one end, Bryant would mimic his moves on the other.
Things came full circle a couple of weeks ago when San Antonio rallied from 25 points down to beat the Clippers. Bryant helped spark that comeback, scoring five points and collecting three rebounds in 21 minutes while chipping in reliable defense on (you guessed it) Leonard. A photo quickly circulated of Bryant digging in defensively on Leonard in the closing minutes.
Bryant told me he didn’t think about defending Leonard in the moment. “It was just, ‘I have to be better than this guy in front of me.’ ” Later, though, when he saw the picture the significance of it hit him.
“I saw a picture of it and it was just me guarding him one-on-one at half court, and I’m like, ‘This is ridiculous. This is crazy,’ ” says Bryant. “If you would’ve told me I would’ve got to guard one of the best players in the world one-on-one with the game on the line, like, what?”
Inside the Spurs’ book club
Speaking of the Spurs … have you heard about San Antonio’s book club? Started last season, the club consists of “four or five members” Harrison Barnes told me this week, which includes some support staff. Victor Wembanyama, whose voracious appetite for reading I covered in this 2024 Sports Illustrated cover story, is the unofficial president of the club. Barnes told me the group reads between two to three books a month (or around 18 to 20 per year) and will often discuss them after practices or while getting taped up before games.
Anyone can suggest a book, Barnes says, though Wembanyama usually has thoughts. That means plenty of fantasy novels. Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicle, a two-part series. The Stormlight Archives, a series of novels by Brandon Sanderson, a Wemby favorite. The Wheel of Time, a collection by Robert Jordan. The group’s latest book is The Suicide Shop, a dark French comedy that is about … well, exactly what it sounds like.
More NBA from Sports Illustrated
Listen to SI’s NBA podcast, Open Floor, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.
- NBA Championship Power Rankings: Lakers Make a Push to Avoid Elimination
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- Looks Like the Spurs Are Forming Their Latest Dynasty
- NBA Playoff Tracker: Thunder Become First Team to Punch Their Ticket to Postseason
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Chris Mannix’s NBA Notes: Lakers Rolling in LeBron’s New Role, Jayson Tatum–Jaylen Brown Debate.
