"Lakers need LeBron to be Chris Bosh or Kevin Love" - Chris Broussard explains how the Lakers can thrive with LeBron despite the "team plays better without him" narrative
After the Los Angeles Lakers showed brilliant defensive effort in the Sunday afternoon win over the New York Knicks , fans and analysts could not help but push the obvious narrative. The Purple and Gold play much better without LeBron James this season, collecting nine wins in 11 games in such contests.
But could they really survive, or at least make noise without their superstar forward? Well, for Chris Broussard , L.A. has no chance either way, but they could tweak things in their pecking order to give themselves a shot.
Bron has to play third fiddle
Although it's just an 11-game sample, the nights when LeBron sits while Luka and AR run the show are indicative of a simple math problem. All three of them require the ball in their hands to be effective. James and Doncic are all heliocentric superstars, while nobody mistakes Reaves as a catch-and-shoot guy like Kyle Korver .
According to Broussard, the solution is also pretty basic, and the good news is that it definitely has worked before.
"What's going on is that the Lakers need LeBron to be Chris Bosh or Kevin Love," Broussard said on FS1's "First Things First." "When you have a ball-dominant, over-dribbling superstar, who's also a big scorer, you can only have one other big scorer. When LeBron was that type of player, he had D-Wade, who's another big player. Chris Bosh had to become a role player. When he had Kyrie in Cleveland, when Kyrie and LeBron can score, Kevin Love has to become a role player."
The same scenario arises again in Los Angeles. Luka leads the league in scoring and is the Association's highest-usage player (36.4 percent). The divide came when a 41-year-old LBJ had to come into the picture and be the second-highest-usage guy on the team, relegating AR15 to third on the totem pole.
Reaves, by far, is one of the most efficient high-volume scorers in all of basketball. Hillbilly Kobe is currently averaging 23.5 points on nearly 50 percent shooting from the field, over 37 percent from downtown, and 88 percent from the charity stripe. He is fifth on the team in true shooting percentage and leads the squad in that department if field goal attempts per game are considered.
Meanwhile, LeBron doesn't have the same scoring efficiency pop he had from years past. Sure, averaging over 21 points per game is nice, but he is currently shooting the worst accuracy from 3-point distance in 10 seasons and the second-worst TS% in six years.
Could LeBron be a role player?
If Broussard's idea plays out, it would require The Chosen One to take a massive step back offensively. As Chris reiterated, it won't be the first time that a star has had to do that on a team built around two elite scorers, one of whom was James himself.
Bosh , the season before getting traded to the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010, averaged over 24 points and 10 rebounds for the Toronto Raptors . The same thing happened with K-Love. He had to give way to the Bron and Kyrie show and forget that he averaged over 26 points and nine boards in Minnesota the year before.
The only problem in this setup is whether LeBron and/or his teammates would be comfortable doing it.
"He's smart enough to know what he could do for this team. But 22 years as a superstar, you can't be a role player… It's hard to do. Not only because of whether it's ego or just you've been a superstar for so long, you can't adjust, but also your stature in the league and in the history of basketball," Broussard opined.
"The other Lakers outside of Luka… everybody else is deferring to LeBron. Even if it's not physically or consciously… they are looking for cues from him subconsciously and looking to see what he's doing… They just defer naturally," he added.
Again, Broussard raised a vital point, all the more reason for L.A. to move on from LeBron (and vice versa), as many have suggested. The logic behind the "taking a step back" thing is easy to understand, but the reality is an entirely different beast.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Mar 10, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
