Lakers: Predicting NBA 2K22 starting and ending player ratings

Reasons for Lakers player rating movement

There’s a huge dropoff on this roster after you get past the Lakers’ Big 3. After LeBron James’s 96, Anthony Davis’s predicted 94 and Russell Westbrook’s predicted 88, we fall all the way down to a predicted 80 for Dwight Howard.

Fortunately for the Lakers, the Big 3 can carry them far, and I expect they’ll outperform their preseason predicted ratings. It appears that NBA 2K has placed an artificial ratings ceiling of 96 on their players, which gives them room to improve as the season goes on, and if LeBron James stays healthy, it seems like he should be able to outperform whatever NBA 2K perceives as their own 96 overall.

In addition, Anthony Davis can be the best big man in the NBA, and if we’re assuming health, there’s no reason to expect that he won’t outperform this 93 overall rating. As for Russell Westbrook, he tends to start slow before turning into an All-World dynamo late in the season. I’d tend to expect his ratings to tick upwards even more than I would Davis or James.

There isn’t much upward movement for the rest of the roster, mostly because of the veteran nature of its composition. The biggest exception to this is Talen Horton-Tucker, who the Lakers have invested a great deal of trust in. Expect him to live up to their lofty goals this season.