LeBron James deserves credit for a lot of things, but turning the Los Angeles Lakers into a national brand isn’t one of them.
During Tuesday’s _Nightcap_, Shannon Sharpe took note of the Lakers basically handing the keys to Luka Dončić by letting him pick and choose who he wants to play with. Sharpe took note because he believes the Lakers never went all in on letting LeBron James call the shots.
According to Sharpe, James gets more blame for only winning one championship with the Lakers than he does credit for winning that same championship while building them into a relevant contender. And with Sharpe assuming James is now on his way out of Los Angeles, he believes his Lakers tenure isn’t appropriately appreciated for what it was.
“Lakers weren’t on TV like they were. When they had all them guys and [they were celebrating and doing all kinds of crazy stuff](https://slamonline.com/nba/watch-kobe-bryant-get-mad-watching-lakers-postgame-celebration-video/), there wasn’t nobody talking about the Lakers,” Sharpe insisted. “We hadn’t talked about the Lakers since Kobe’s 60-point game. We didn’t talk about the Lakers before, and we hadn’t talked about them since, until one 23 showed up.”
“I don’t remember the Lakers being on TV,” he continued. “But I’ll tell you who was on TV, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors…they wasn’t on TV. Yeah, they was in the L.A. market, but they weren’t broadcast nationally, don’t do that.”
Sharpe is right, the Lakers were terrible before LeBron arrived. In the five years prior to James signing with Los Angeles, the Lakers were averaging 57 losses per season. They were bad, they were mocked, they were struggling to develop young players, and they were failing to rebuild.
But where Sharpe is wrong is the idea that making the Lakers relevant again was some sort of feat. Yes, the Lakers were awful in the five years prior to LeBron’s arrival, but they were still just five years removed from being a contender with Kobe Bryant until he suffered a torn Achilles. It didn’t take LeBron to get the Lakers back on national TV. Anyone capable of making the Lakers closer to being a .500 team would have been sufficient.
The Lakers were a brand before LeBron James got there, and the NBA was going to capitalize on that brand with or without him, which is why the Lakers were scheduled for [35 nationally televised games](https://www.nba.com/lakers/news/170814-lakers-national-tv) during the 2017-18 season, when they were coming off a 26-56 record and LeBron was still in Cleveland.
James’s tenure with the Lakers is probably underrated. He won a championship with the Lakers, and he took them to the playoffs seven times in eight years, including another trip to the conference finals. But LeBron James is not the reason the Lakers are relevant. The Lakers are still living off the brand that Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant built, rather than benefiting from what LeBron did for them.