Since I’ve been seeing a few posts about this lately, without anyone explaining why the Lakers offense sucks when LBJ is on the bench, I thought I’d do a quick break down.

1. LBJ is one of the best players in the NBA. When he’s out, any team will likely be - w/o him… duh.

2. The Lakers / Ham is running a 5 out 0 in motion offense this year which REQUIRES a rim slasher to be effective. The “offense” only works when you have someone like a Daaron Fox, Jimmy Butler, Harden, Clarkson, Luka, LBJ, etc… type player. The Lakers only have 1 player on the roster than can do this, and hence why LBJ’s drives to the rim are over twice as many as last year.

This is where a bit of the madness comes in. On one hand, you have a team saying they want to preserve LBJ’s minutes, since it’s his 21st season. On the other hand, you’re running an offense that is even more reliant on him than years past. Something has to give.