Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick was very open about the limitations his team is dealing with after a loss on Sunday against the crosstown rival Clippers. “We don’t have a huge margin for error,” Redick admitted during his postgame press conference. “It has to be emphasized daily to touch the paint, to play paint-to-great mentality, make the extra pass. We don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to necessarily always draw two to the ball. We don’t have a guy on our team that’s going to be able to get past his guy one-on-one and get to the paint and spread it out to the perimeter.”
It was a surprisingly candid comment from an NBA head coach and effectively served as an admission of some of this roster’s shortcomings. Right now, the team isn’t good enough to win games in which it does not execute. Its best player, LeBron James, echoed those sentiments.
“That’s how our team is constructed,” James said when asked about his coach’s comments. “We don’t have room for error — for much error.” While both James and Redick were largely lamenting the state of the team, both notably pointed to the construction of the roster in doing so. James even did so a second time. “We don’t have a choice,” he continued. “That’s the way our team is constructed, and we have to, we have to play close-to-perfect basketball.”
Lakers’ LeBron James airs frustration over slim margin for error: ‘We have to play close to perfect’
Jack Maloney
If it were November, these concerns could be written off as growing pains. If it were April, they would represent a lost cause. But it’s late January, a time on the calendar in which James is known to be a bit more expressive than usual. It’s not hard to tell why.
The trade deadline is a bit more than two weeks away. At 22-18, the Lakers are hovering around the middle of the Western Conference. They’ll likely play in the postseason, but in their current condition, they probably won’t stay there for very long. If they are going to go on a real postseason run this spring, they are probably going to have to make meaningful improvements at the trade deadline now — even after the recent acquisition of Dorian Finney-Smith.
So, was James trying to send a message to the front office with his comments? If he was, well, he was being a bit more subtle about it than he was a year ago at this time. Remember when he wore a New York Knicks towel during a post-game interview at Madison Square Garden? At the time, there were plenty of rumors about James having potential interest in joining the Knicks, but as well-known James reporter Brian Windhorst noted on his Hoop Collective podcast at the time, it certainly seemed like he was using the situation to his advantage.
“He can just be like, ‘Oh, I just put a towel around my shoulders. What are you talking about? You guys are out of your mind.’ But this is what LeBron excels at. He computes all this stuff,” Windhorst said. “Of course, he was cognizant and aware he was putting on a towel that said New York Knicks. Why would he mess with the Knicks? Because he was using the Knicks as a tool to pressure the Lakers.”
James has been in the public eye for more than two decades at this point, and in that time has grown quite skilled at sending subtle messages through his comments and actions. In the past, he was a bit more direct about it. After his 2017 Cleveland Cavaliers lost a January game to the New Orleans Pelicans, for instance, James was very clear on how he felt about the roster at the time, saying “we top-heavy as s—” and “we need a f—ing playmaker.” At that point, the Cavaliers had already made one trade, landing sharpshooter Kyle Korver. They would go on to sign former All-Star point guard Deron Williams through a buyout in February.
The tone and urgency of these messages tends to correlate, for obvious reasons, to how well his team is playing at the time. His Cavaliers had lost five in seven when he made those comments in 2017. When the 2020 Lakers were rolling through the league on their way to a championship, though? “We have enough right now,” James said.
The apex of these “GM LeBron” quotes came in 2023, when the Lakers were dangling Russell Westbrook in an attempt to undo the 2021 trade that James had previously advocated for. Early in the season, he deferred, telling reporters to “Go ask Rob those questions,” in reference to Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka. As the season progressed, though, the tone shifted. “I think about how much longer I’m gonna play the game,” James said in January of that year. “I think about how I don’t want to finish my career playing at this level, from a team aspect. I want to still be able to compete for championships because I know what I can bring to any ball club with the right pieces.”
By January, his impatience was obvious. “Y’all know what the f— should be happening,” James told The Athletic at the time. “I don’t need to talk.” Whether it was his public cajoling or merely a viable deal presenting itself, the Lakers ultimately did improve the roster. Their deadline swap of Westbrook and a first-round pick for D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley helped them reach the Western Conference finals. Still, at the time, James was hopeful for a different move that didn’t pan out.
When Kyrie Irving became available during that same deadline period, James didn’t hide his interest in reuniting with his former Cleveland running mate. When asked if Irving could push the Lakers into championship contention, James said “Obviously that’s a — what’s the word you use — ‘Duh’ question when you talk about a player like [Kyrie].” Public prodding for stars wasn’t exactly new for him at the time, either. In 2018, he said it would be “amazing” to play with Anthony Davis, which he ultimately got to do the very next season. After his initial comments on Davis went viral, though, he did express frustration for how the media painted them.
“Ask about Kyrie Irving, Giannis [Antetokounmpo],” James responded after getting asked about Davis again. “Ask about [Joel] Embiid, Ben Simmons. Go ahead, ask me about all of them. Luka Doncic. Ask me right now. C’mon, guys. It’s not rocket science. These are great players. Absolutely, I would love to play with a lot of great players. That’s just who I am. People get caught up in bunches, sometimes when they wish they could control what you say. And they can’t control me. At all. And I play by the rules.”
That last comment about the rules followed reporting that small-market general managers were upset that the league’s tampering rules were not being enforced after James commented on a potential partnership with Davis. This is a problem that goes far beyond James, though he reportedly does his fair share of behind-the-scenes recruiting. His part in the Westbrook sweepstakes is well known. In 2021, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Lakers’ star players — which would seemingly point to James — recruited Andre Drummond to the team following a mid-season buyout. Sometimes the work of improving a roster is done in public. Sometimes it is done in private.
It would be hard to argue with James’ results on either front. He’s a four-time NBA champion. While his teams haven’t been as aggressive as he’d probably prefer lately, they have by and large invested picks and dollars into surrounding him with appropriate talent.
So, will the Lakers do so this deadline? They’ve already made the Finney-Smith deal, though the results have been mixed. The Lakers are just 2-5 with him in the lineup, and his shooting numbers have gone down in Los Angeles. Reporter Jovan Buha said on Saturday that the latest was that things are “trending more towards them making a smaller move” rather than a blockbuster. They have not been seriously linked to any of the biggest names available at this year’s deadline, most notably Jimmy Butler.
There’s no evidence now that James is angling for someone specific. Over the summer, he was reportedly willing to take a pay cut to accommodate an acquisition of one of a handful of players — Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas among them — but the Lakers did not ultimately wind up landing any of those players. Valanciunas is still seemingly available through a trade, and the Lakers do have a hole at backup center, but such an addition would hardly be seismic.
If James believes a bigger move is needed, it’s hard to imagine he won’t express that in some way in the next two weeks. James tends not to be especially subtle this time of year, and Sunday’s frustrations certainly felt like sentiments he has expressed at trade deadlines past.
