Los Angeles Lakers: 3 big questions going into the 2020-21 NBA season

3. Is the backcourt better or worse than last season?

Unusually for a championship team, the Los Angeles Lakers overturned much of their roster this offseason. They lost JaVale McGee, Dwight Howard, Avery Bradley, Rajon Rondo and Danny Green. The latter three leaving is something to note, and combined they averaged 69 minutes per game in the backcourt / on the wing.

This season the Lakers appear to be replacing them via a few different avenues. They signed Wesley Matthews as the Green substitute, traded for Dennis Schroeder as some sort of Rajon Rondo substitute, and will look to increase the minutes of Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Talen Horton-Tucker to fill in the rest.

The best player of either group is Danny Green, who pairs defense and 3-point shooting better than almost any role player in the league. The team soured on him after a postseason cold stretch, and Matthews is about as good of a replacement as they could have gotten at that price. Still, that’s a slight downgrade and likely puts more pressure on either Horton-Tucker or Kyle Kuzma to guard opposing small forwards when Matthews is out of the game.

Schroeder is an overall upgrade on Rondo, especially at this point in the latter’s career. That being said, Schroeder has nowhere near the playoff track record of Rondo, who flipped a mediocre regular season into a reliably great postseason run last year. What Schroeder brings is more dynamic play creation and pressure on the rim as a cutter and pick-and-roll operator.

Finally, there is no direct replacement for Avery Bradley. There is no player to lock up and guard an opposing team’s point guard, harrying him up-the-court and forcing him to swing the ball. Bradley has his warts, and the team won a title without him as he sat out the NBA Bubble. Yet if either Horton-Tucker or Alex Caruso can take a step forward, the team may be happy with the result.

In the end, the trade looks to be a very slight upgrade, and it is absolutely an upgrade compared to the team’s run in the playoffs when they were without Bradley and Green was at times unplayable. There is enough youth for upside, and all of these players have experience being complementary pieces to a ball-dominant star.

The 2020-21 season begins with the Los Angeles Lakers the team to beat. They will receive their rings on Opening Night and spend the next 72 games plus playoffs proving they are still worthy of the throne. How will things play out? It will be fun to find out.