Lakers Roster Shakeup: Are They Closer to a Title?
The Los Angeles Lakers tore up their old blueprint this summer. Now comes the uncomfortable question: did they actually build something better, or just something different?
LeBron James is gone. The franchise that spent half a decade orbiting around his gravity has handed the keys fully to Luka Doncic, with Austin Reaves as his main running mate. Around them, the names have changed at a dizzying pace.
- Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Kevon Looney, Jaden Hardy, Matisse Thybulle, Ziaire Williams in.
- James, Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart, Luke Kennard, Deandre Ayton, Jaxson Hayes out.
On paper, it’s a flurry of activity. In reality, the question that hangs over it is brutal in its simplicity: are the Lakers any closer to a title?
ESPN’s Zach Kram framed it bluntly, noting that while Los Angeles “might have been the busiest team of the summer,” the core issue remains the same — you don’t just wave away the loss of LeBron James, even at 40. The Lakers, he argued, did well on some depth pieces like Thybulle and Williams, but sacrificed flexibility and still don’t have a clean answer for the production and presence they just watched walk out the door.
The front office has made its bet. The rest is noise until the games start. For now, all anyone can do is dissect the roster around Doncic and ask whether it truly maximizes a 27-year-old superstar in his prime.
The Sexton Puzzle
One of the biggest flashpoints in that debate is Collin Sexton.
On the surface, the signing makes sense. Sexton is 27, a proven scorer, and perhaps the only true secondary ball-handler on the roster behind Doncic. He once averaged over 24 points and four assists per game for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2020-21. Last season, he put up 14.2 points and 3.7 assists with the Charlotte Hornets. That’s not theoretical upside; that’s production.
But fit matters as much as numbers, and that’s where the concern creeps in.
Team insider Jovan Buha has zeroed in on a specific problem: what happens in closing time? His issue isn’t Sexton’s offense. It’s what a three-guard lineup of Doncic, Reaves and Sexton looks like on the other end of the floor when the game slows down and every possession gets hunted.
“I think this has been my biggest gripe with the Lakers roster construction,” Buha said. He acknowledged the value of finally landing a legitimate backup point guard, a box the Lakers clearly wanted checked. Then came the caveat. Because of Sexton’s defensive limitations, Buha doesn’t believe the guard can reliably share the floor with both Doncic and Reaves against top-tier playoff opponents — let alone close games.
That’s a serious charge. If your main backup point guard can’t be trusted in high-leverage minutes, how valuable is he in May and June?
Buha went further, questioning Sexton’s projected role. Rather than the 24-to-26-minute workload he might carry in the regular season, Buha floated a more modest playoff profile — something closer to 16 to 18 minutes a night. A useful piece, but not a pillar.
And that’s the crux of his criticism. In his view, the Lakers used a key roster slot and money on a player who fills a need but doesn’t necessarily elevate or complement their two best players when it matters most. Sexton offers insurance if Doncic or Reaves miss time — and Buha readily concedes that’s likely, with 10 to 15 games off for each a reasonable expectation — but insurance is not the same as ceiling.
The Power Forward That Never Came
The counterfactual is easy to imagine and hard to ignore.
What if, instead of Sexton, the Lakers had chased a starting-caliber power forward on a multiyear deal? Someone to stabilize the frontcourt, soak up tough defensive assignments, and give Doncic and Reaves a more natural two-way partner in the bigger lineups that tend to define the postseason?
Would the roster face the same level of scrutiny?
That’s where the debate sharpens. The Lakers did add size and defensive chops in places — Kessler as a rim protector, Looney as a rebounding specialist, Thybulle as a perimeter pest — but none of them solves the “closing lineup” riddle as cleanly as a high-level, two-way forward might have.
Instead, Los Angeles sits in a middle ground. Sexton can run an offense, score in bunches, and carry stretches when Doncic sits. He’s versatile enough to toggle between on-ball creation and secondary scoring. Yet his impact could be blunted if the Lakers’ biggest postseason weakness turns out to be on the wing and at the four, not in backup playmaking.
Buha summed up the risk in stark terms: the Lakers’ ceiling, he argued, “caves” if Doncic and Reaves aren’t available and at their best. The entire project, all the roster churn, comes down to those two. Sexton helps them survive the nights one of them sits. He doesn’t necessarily help them win the nights when both are on the floor and the opposition is elite.
That’s not a knock on Sexton’s talent. It’s a question of roster architecture.
The Lakers have chosen their path: heavy usage for Doncic, a bigger role for Reaves, depth spread across the rotation, and Sexton as the insurance policy with starter-level stretches in his game. The risk is that when the season tilts into its most unforgiving moments, the very guard they invested in becomes a luxury they can’t afford to play.
If that happens, the summer’s busiest team may discover that activity and ambition are not the same as contention.
