Five Times Lebron James Did (Or Didn’t) Turn Around a .500 Team at Midseason
LeBron squads can often make moves to save a season like the Lakers are having now. But not always.
It’s no secret that the Los Angeles Lakers have been an inconsistent mess in the first half of this season. They haven’t strung together any streak (win or lose) longer than four games so far — something only Toronto and Dallas can also say — and they’ve lost 13 of 21 games since winning the In-Season Tournament in early December.
"We just suck right now," LeBron James told reporters earlier this month after L.A. lost for the 10th time in 13 contests. And while the Lakers have won five of eight since then, their current record (excluding the In-Season Tournament final) still sits at a perfectly .500 mark of 22-22, earning them a 19th-place ranking in the Elo ratings and just a 43% probability to make the playoffs.
But if there is a silver lining for the Lakers, it’s that James — who, it should be repeated as often as possible, is playing at a remarkably high level this season despite L.A.’s struggles — has been here before. At various times throughout his career, LeBron-led teams have found themselves looking surprisingly mediocre at midseason, only to (sometimes) pull things out of the fire and go on a tear down the stretch and in the playoffs.
Here are five other times James’s high-powered teams were hovering around .500 after the first half (i.e., through 41 games) of the regular season:
2022-23 Lakers
Midseason Record: 19-22 (.463)
Elo Rating: 1502 (17th)
Rest of regular season: 25-17 (.595)
Playoffs: Made Western Conference finals
As we will see throughout this list, James — with the help of his front offices — is the maestro of the midseason team shakeup. Last year’s Lakers were perhaps the perfect example of this, shipping away the underachieving, expensive Russell Westbrook as part of a trade spree that netted them new rotation members Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and D'Angelo Russell. The result was a stunning turnaround to move from 13th in the West to making the play-in tournament as the No. 7 seed, then knocking off the defending champion Warriors before losing to the eventual NBA champ Nuggets in the conference finals. With new trade rumors already swirling (hello, Dejounte Murray?), this is the type of turnaround the Lakers are probably aiming for again this season.
2021-22 Lakers
Midseason Record: 21-20 (.512)
Elo Rating: 1482 (19th)
Rest of regular season: 12-29 (.293)
Playoffs: None
For a counter-example where LeBron and Los Angeles simply couldn’t summon a midseason playoff push, we need to look back only one year earlier. The 2021-22 Lakers went into the season with huge expectations — they had the league’s second-best preseason title odds (behind only the Brooklyn Nets, ask us how that one turned out) — after overhauling their roster to add Westbrook and a still offensively useful Carmelo Anthony. But much like this season, the Lakers treaded water for most of the first half. Then, beset by injuries and unable to make any midseason moves of note, they completely collapsed in the second half and added their names to the annals of NBA superteam flops.
2014-15 Cavaliers
Midseason Record: 21-20 (.512)
Elo Rating: 1458 (21st)
Rest of regular season: 32-9 (.780)
Playoffs: Made NBA Finals
Although midseason dissatisfaction would cost Cavs coach David Blatt his job the following year, the first entry in LeBron’s second stint with Cleveland was actually much closer to .500 at the halfway point of the schedule. (Amazingly, the ‘15-16 Cavs were 30-11 when they replaced Blatt with Tyronn Lue, though you can’t argue with the results.) Still acclimating to a roster that absorbed James and Kevin Love, the Cavs were barely breaking even before a pair of January trades that added J.R. Smith, Timofey Mozgov and Iman Shumpert. All three posted Estimated RAPTOR ratings of +1.7 or better in a Cleveland uniform, and the Cavs went 34-12 down the stretch of the regular season, making it to the NBA Finals but losing to the Warriors in six games.
2018-19 Lakers
Midseason Record: 22-19 (.537)
Elo Rating: 1526 (16th)
Rest of regular season: 15-26 (.366)
Playoffs: None
James joined the Lakers after stints with Miami and Cleveland that produced an incredible eight consecutive trips to the NBA Finals, which helped inspire similarly high expectations for his first season in Los Angeles. (This was despite now playing in the same conference with the two-time defending champion Warriors.) But in an unusual twist, James was tasked with leading an inexperienced supporting cast that had ranked as the NBA’s second-youngest the season before — and the team failed to reel in Anthony Davis at the deadline after months of speculation that he would be acquired for members of L.A.’s young core. With team chemistry eroding, not even a vow from James that he would switch into “playoff mode” could salvage the season, as L.A. faded badly down the stretch to miss the playoffs. But it bears mentioning that James did eventually get his man in the offseason, with the LeBron-AD pairing yielding a title the following season.
2007-08 Cavaliers
Midseason Record: 23-18 (.561)
Elo Rating: 1545 (14th)
Rest of regular season: 22-19 (.537)
Playoffs: Made second round
On the heels of an unexpected run to the NBA Finals — the first of 10 James has currently made in his career — the ‘07-08 Cavs didn’t take the massive leap forward observers were expecting of them before the season. Instead, they hung around slightly above .500 for most of the year despite James’ ongoing improvement as a 23-year-old megastar. In an early preview of things to come, though, Cleveland remade its roster extensively at the trade deadline, dealing for Delonte West, Joe Smith, Ben Wallace and Wally Szczerbiak. While the team went just 15-13 afterward to close out the regular season, the Cavs secured the East’s No. 4 seed and beat their frequent nemesis, the Wizards, in the first round. Going up against the Celtics in Round 2, they pushed the eventual champions to seven games — with LeBron scoring 45 of his team’s 92 points in the series finale — before bowing out of the playoffs.
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