{"id":547662,"date":"2026-03-18T04:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547662\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T04:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:43:11","slug":"lakers-rolling-in-lebrons-new-role-jayson-tatum-jaylen-brown-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547662\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers Rolling in LeBron\u2019s New Role, Jayson Tatum\u2013Jaylen Brown Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This first appeared in the Open Floor newsletter<\/a>, a free, twice-weekly publication straight to your inbox. Subscribe now.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2013less Clippers. I\u2019ve done a handful of interviews with Victor Wembanyama over the years, including this 2024 magazine cover story<\/a>. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LeBron\u2019s new Lakers role<\/p>\n

Last week I posed the question: Should we be taking the Lakers more seriously?<\/a> Los Angeles had won three straight games without LeBron James<\/a>, 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\u2019s 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.\u2019s heels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, on Saturday, the Lakers outlasted the Nuggets, with James shooting 53.8%. On Monday they beat back the Rockets \u2026 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, \u201cThat the best thing for our team is [James] being the third-highest-used player.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I wrote last week, this version of the Lakers, with Luka Don\u010di\u0107 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<\/a>. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jayson Tatum\u2013Jaylen Brown debate<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, with the one loss the game in San Antonio in which Brown was ejected in the second quarter<\/a>. While the fit has appeared relatively seamless, Brown told reporters that successfully integrating Tatum has taken sacrifices from everyone\u2014including him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes some humility, it takes some understanding,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI think JT is extremely important to us for what we want to do. Obviously, I\u2019m having a great season, but then I have to just think, what\u2019s the big picture? And sometimes that\u2019s not easy, but I always put the team first and what the bigger picture is first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Celtics fans get triggered by the Tatum vs. Brown debate<\/a>, as if the media is trying to pit them against each other (disclaimer: I am not). But this is Brown\u2019s 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\u2019s 22. In March, it\u2019s ticked down to 17. He still has some scoring outbursts\u2014the 41 points he scored against Phoenix on Monday, backed by 19 of 21 from the free throw line, is an example\u2014but his unselfishness has allowed Tatum to ease his way back into the rotation. And Boston is better for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NBA expansion fee numbers<\/p>\n

ESPN reported this week that the NBA would take the next step toward expansion<\/a> at this month\u2019s Board of Governors\u2019 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\u2019d 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\u2019m told the owners are hoping to extract a $10 billion expansion fee for each team, with prospective team owners already lining up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Will NBA shorten its schedule?<\/p>\n

While some may interpret Steve Kerr\u2019s crusade to reduce the NBA\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The financial component, an obstacle in roughly the same way the iceberg was an obstacle for the Titanic, is daunting, but it\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carter Bryant\u2019s full-circle Kawhi Leonard moment<\/p>\n

Reported out a fun story this week on Carter Bryant, the Spurs rookie forward who has emerged as a fixture in San Antonio\u2019s 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\u2019s father, D\u2019Cean, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bryant told me he didn\u2019t think about defending Leonard in the moment. \u201cIt was just, \u2018I have to be better than this guy in front of me.\u2019 \u201d Later, though, when he saw the picture the significance of it hit him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a picture of it and it was just me guarding him one-on-one at half court, and I\u2019m like, \u2018This is ridiculous. This is crazy,\u2019 \u201d says Bryant. \u201cIf you would\u2019ve told me I would\u2019ve got to guard one of the best players in the world one-on-one with the game on the line, like, what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Spurs<\/p>\n

Spurs forward Carter Bryant shoots the ball against the Clippers. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Inside the Spurs\u2019 book club<\/p>\n

Speaking of the Spurs \u2026 have you heard about San Antonio\u2019s book club? Started last season, the club consists of \u201cfour or five members\u201d 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Anyone can suggest a book, Barnes says, though Wembanyama usually has thoughts. That means plenty of fantasy novels. Patrick Rothfuss\u2019s 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\u2019s latest book is The Suicide Shop, a dark French comedy that is about \u2026 well, exactly what it sounds like.<\/p>\n

More NBA from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n

Listen to SI\u2019s NBA podcast, Open Floor, below or on Apple<\/a> and Spotify<\/a>. Watch the show on SI\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This first appeared in the Open Floor newsletter, a free, twice-weekly publication straight to your inbox.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-547662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}