The Lakers have had a very eventful offseason so far, starting with the trade for Russell Westbrook (that has since become a 5-team trade that includes the Spencer Dinwiddie sign-and-trade to Washington) and continuing through free agency where they have been gobbling up every possible player to fill out the roster on veteran minimums.
A common theme emerged early in those signings as the first four — Wayne Ellington, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard, and Kent Bazemore — were all former Lakers coming back to L.A. They have since added Carmelo Anthony, Malik Monk, Kendrick Nunn, and re-signed Talen Horton-Tucker to fill out the roster around LeBron James and Anthony Davis. After those initial deals started to roll in, people couldn’t help but point out how old the Lakers roster was, and jokes were flying around social media about their collective age.
LeBron James, naturally, heard and saw it all — from the discussion of Westbrook’s fit with he and Davis to all the old jokes on Twitter — and he decided to respond on Wednesday night with a tweet he made twice (and then deleted shortly after both times).
The #ThankYou at the end is my favorite part, as James seems thrilled to have plenty of motivational material for he and his team to lean on throughout next season. There are certainly some questions for this Lakers team to address, namely what they will look like defensively after a complete retooling of the roster around Davis and James that swapped defense for shooting (something they certainly needed to address as well). Still, this is a team with two of the best players in the league and, while not without faults, Westbrook brings them an edge for the regular season that could help them considerably.
James’ tweet says he wants everyone to keep with the jokes when it begins, but it’ll be more important how it all ends. LeBron hopes there will be victory laps aplenty next June, and if nothing else, the #WashedKing content figures to be tremendous this season.