Lakers: 3 reasons LeBron James can win his 5th championship in 2020-21

Reason No. 2 LeBron James and the Lakers can win a title: Anthony Davis is on fire

LeBron James learned a long time ago that you can’t win an NBA championship all by yourself. At his physical peak as a young superstar with the Cleveland Cavaliers, he ran up against true teams like the Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic and San Antonio Spurs before realizing that if he was going to win, it was going to have to be alongside other great players.

That led him to the Miami Heat alongside Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and then back to Cleveland with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. He’s won championships in both stops, and the next step in his journey was with the Los Angeles Lakers where he believed he could sway another great player to join him.

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That great player ended up being Anthony Davis, and Davis’s incredible playoff performance in the bubble last season was a huge reason the Lakers were able to reign victorious as champions.

More often than not in the playoffs, Davis ends up being both a barometer and driving force of success. When he’s lethargic or tentative, the Lakers struggle. When he’s aggressive and raining fire from 3-point distance and the mid-range, the Los Angeles Lakers are absolutely unbeatable.

That’s been the case in the first round of these playoffs as well. In Game 1, Davis couldn’t find a rhythm. He scored just 13 points on 5-of-16 shooting from the floor, and the Lakers lost by a 99-90 margin. In Games 2 and 3, he scored 34 points in each game and shot a total of 35 free throws while going 18-of-37 from the floor.

Even at peak health, LeBron James isn’t going to be able to navigate through the Western Conference to the NBA Finals for his fifth championship. He’s going to need his second-in-command to come through for him, and so far in these playoffs, Anthony Davis has done just that.