Luka and LeBron: Lakers Two-Headed Monster https://t.co/kvNzOonxOS— LakerTom (@LakerTom) December 30, 2025
Luka and LeBron: Lakers Two-Headed Monster
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December 30, 2025 1 Comment
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FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:
This is the pairing we’ve all been waiting for. But we haven’t seen Luka Doncic and LeBron James together all that often.
Since Doncic joined the Lakers in that blockbuster trade, he and James have played together without Austin Reaves only six times in the regular season. With Reaves now sidelined for a month with a calf injury, the two Lakers superstars are going to have to get familiar with each other again.
In lineups with Doncic and Reaves, the Lakers have a net rating of 7.3, one of the team’s highest ratings for a two-man lineup that’s played at least 100 minutes. Playing together for 452 minutes, it’s the most efficient rating for any pair of regular starters.
But lineups with Doncic and James have a -10.3 net rating in 279 minutes and the James-Reaves pairing is -6.1 in 245 minutes.
Coach JJ Redick acknowledged after the team’s three-game losing streak that the offense since James returned has felt disorganized at times. While Reaves’ injury strips the Lakers of their second-leading scorer and an important ball handler, Redick agreed that just having Doncic and James for now can make the offense easier to untangle.
Redick presented a potential solution by restructuring the substitution pattern during a win over the Kings on Sunday. He subbed Doncic out of the first quarter with about three minutes remaining instead of having him play the entire first frame. He re-entered the game with about nine minutes left in the second instead of waiting until the six- or seven-minute mark.
The plan was to let Doncic and James have more time operating the offense individually, Redick said, while not diminishing either player’s total minutes. The team still used both of them in actions together and it’s not an overarching plan to “keep them apart,” Redick stressed.
“We’re going to do this for the foreseeable future,” Redick said, “and just see how it goes.”
The Lakers were plus-12 in the 18 minutes with Doncic and James on the court against the Kings compared to -5.8 in 23.7 minutes in previous games this year. The projected starting lineup now that Reaves it out would typically feature Doncic, James, Marcus Smart, Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton, and that group has a -26.0 net ranking in 37 minutes together this season.
“I don’t want to create the narrative of ‘me and Luka,’” James said. “It’s five guys on the floor and seven guys that come off the bench. It needs to be all of us. It’s important that we set the tone.”
More than just the production on the court, the Lakers will look to their superstars for leadership during this next stretch. Redick acknowledged that Doncic and James have a responsibility to set the tone for the Lakers, especially at the beginning of games.
The Lakers were minus-28 in first quarters during their three-game losing streak. Doncic said after the Christmas Day debacle that everybody had to give “better effort, starting with me.”
Then he backed up his words with his play, scoring nine points with two assists and three rebounds in the first quarter. He had two steals and a block in the first half.
“He’s the head of the snake,” forward Maxi Kleber said of Doncic before the game. “We all follow him, so it’s good for us to see him also step up in that sense, and take ownership, because it will help everybody else do the same and focus especially with that effort on every possession.”