Los Angeles Lakers: 2018-19 NBA season preview

Best-case scenario

The Los Angeles Lakers find a balanced rotation that keeps everybody on the roster happy or content with their roles. This will likely take time to develop, but clicking in the second half of the season and peaking heading into the playoffs leads to a top-four seed.

LeBron James fits into the Lakers’ up-tempo system while maintaining his incredible form and health. Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart continue their development and are elevated playing alongside LeBron and the rest of the Lakers veterans.

Reaching the Western Conference Finals should be the ceiling for this team and I think it is very realistic. Having their young players get valuable playoff experience will build them for the future while LeBron gets his feet wet in his first Western Conference postseason trip.

Worst-case scenario

The Lakers’ roster grows uneasy with the rotation as Lance Stephenson and Rajon Rondo push for more minutes alongside LeBron James, who grows frustrated with the young players and wants to play the win-now veterans. This flusters the youngsters’ confidence and causes an unrest to seep into the locker room.

The Lakers get off to a slow start and can’t recover in time to make the playoffs in the gauntlet of teams fighting for the postseason in the Western Conference. LeBron starts nudging the front office to shift their focus to win-now mode to align more with his career arc, putting the Lakers at a crossroads.

This brings plenty of negative energy and noise surrounding the team into the offseason, with Lonzo, Ingram, Kuz and Hart seeing their futures in Los Angeles hang in the balance. Who knows what happens from here, but missing the postseason barring injuries would make the 2018-19 season a failure.