Los Angeles Lakers: How Kawhi Leonard’s move to the Clippers impacts the Lakers

3. The West will be even tougher for the Lakers

When everyone outside of the Clippers’ inner circle assumed Leonard’s decision had come down to the Lakers or Raptors, it meant one of two things would happen for the Western Conference:

Either the Lakers would get Leonard and roll out a new powerhouse that could dominate the conference like the Golden State Warriors had just done for the last five years … or Leonard would stay in the East, leaving the West to be a serious dogfight between strong — but not quite “super” — teams like the Lakers, Warriors, Thunder, Houston Rockets, Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz.

(Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the San Antonio Spurs, either.)

By turning the Clippers into a sudden title contender, Leonard and George just helped make the West even stronger, as the conference heads into 2019-20 without an obvious favorite.

The biggest loser in this looks like Russell Westbrook, who went from having a league Most Valuable Player finalist (George) at his side in OKC to being back in the position he was in a couple years ago — after Kevin Durant left the Thunder — as something of a lone wolf.

Unless the Thunder pull off a Hail Mary trade for a second star, Westbrook will have to do historic things just to keep his team in the contender conversation.

That still, however, leaves more than a handful of potentially great teams that the Lakers will have to get through to make the NBA Finals.

The NBA playoffs is never easy, but that road would’ve been a lot smoother for the Lakers had they been able to bring in Leonard.