NBA Hater Report: LeBron James is becoming a casual player and it's killing the Lakers

Welcome back to the NBA Hater Report: A breakdown of some of the players, teams and trends around the league that are drawing the ire of yours truly. If you're not a fellow pessimist, proceed with caution. 

A couple weeks ago, North Carolina State coach Will Wade went on an epic postgame rant. The gist was this: Casual players are the death of a basketball team. 

It reminded me of the two summers I spent at Steve Lavin's basketball camp when I was a kid. Lavin called it "wearing your cool jacket" when a guy was going half speed, and he would call that kid out in front of the camp. It happened to me twice. I liked to shoot deep 3-pointers and dribble between my legs without going anywhere. I did not like to play defense. 

Casual players, cool jackets, it's all the same thing. These are the guys who don't box out, who don't pay attention away from the play, who can generally only be bothered to defend when their man has the ball, and even then the slap-the-floor stance is mostly for show and rarely holds up beyond the first move. 

LeBron James is becoming a casual player and it's killing the Lakers. 

Now, before we go any farther in sullying the King's good name, let's first make it clear that LeBron is not the Lakers' only, or even most, casual player. That distinction belongs to Luka Doncic, the president of all casuals. 

Look at Dončić loafing around in the paint on the possession below. He looks like he's having a confused senior moment searching for his keys, spinning aimless circles in the living room as his man, Jabari Smith Jr., stands unoccupied behind the 3-point line. The face-saving contest at the last second is the exact kind of "look at me, I'm playing defense!" move upon which the casual-player club was built. 

It's not just Dončić. Look at Rui Hachimura standing jelly-legged in no-man's land, rubbernecking the action below him (which he is in no position to affect anyway) with his back to his man, Kevin Durant, who happily accepts the invite to cut straight down the red carpet him like a prisoner scurrying past a half-asleep guard. 

Hachimura was just following the casual lead of Austin Reaves, who let this happen less than two minutes into L.A.'s Christmas massacre at the hands of the Rockets.

These types of plays are the makings of a Lakers defense that is operating as a bottom-five unit. Some of it is out of their hands. I once had a scout tell me that lateral force, meaning the ability to move side to side as a defender with enough explosion to stay in front of today's super athletes, is the most un-teachable skill he looks for in a prospect. A player, for the most part, either has it or he doesn't. 

Luka, to say the least, doesn't have it. As a whole, the Lakers are an old, slow, athletically compromised team that is going to struggle to defend even at max effort and focus for the full duration of possessions and, ultimately, games. That's what makes LeBron playing at his full defensive speed and with consistent attention to the dirty-work details, on this particular team, so important. 

Even at (almost) 41 years old and in his 23rd NBA season, James remains the Lakers' most forceful athlete (unless you count Jarred Vanderbilt on the defensive end, but he's an offensive liability). Call that an indictment of Rob Pelinka's roster or an endorsement of LeBron's still-standing physicality at this stage of his career, but either way it is what it is. 

The Lakers are set offensively with Luka and Reaves (when he gets back from this most recent calf strain). If they really want to compete with the big boys, they badly need LeBron to spend more, if not the bulk, of his energy if not covering for guys on the defensive end the way he has spent the rest of his career doing so on the offensive end, then at least carrying his own weight. They cannot afford for their most physical, athletic defender to be just another casual. 

Unfortunately, that's exactly what LeBron has been this season. Maybe it's age. Maybe he's just not wired to defend and rebound with consistent and committed force when he's no longer getting the same kind of offensive dopamine hits. Maybe Luka is contagious. Nico Harrison certainly thinks so. 

Whatever the case, here's spectator LeBron drying his hands on his jersey as his man, Amen Thompson, crashes from the corner for a long offensive rebound that leads to a second-chance 3-pointer. 

Here he is again just standing around doing nothing, not in position to help or get back to his man, who happens to be 42% 3-point shooter Royce O'Neal. 

Here he is getting cooked by Dillon Brooks -- either because he's not willing to stay strong against multiple moves or because he's no longer capable. 

Here he is flapping his chicken wing to feel for Thompson instead of actually putting a body on him and boxing out, and then half-heartedly going up for a rebound with one arm as Thompson shows him what actually pursuing a rebound looks like. 

Here he is inexplicably leaking out in transition when the Lakers don't even have the ball, leaving Alperen Sengun completely unoccupied to cruise in for a put-back. 

Apologists will point to Sunday's win over the Kings in which LeBron looked great and energized on both ends. Maybe JJ Redick's "uncomfortable" Saturday practice worked. But I go back to Will Wade's casual player rant, which came after his Wolfpack had beaten Texas Southern by 36 points. Anyone can look good against a bad team, and the Kings are one of the worst teams in the league. 

If this continues for an extended time (maybe Reaves being out will bring the best out of LeBron), then we can reassess. But for now, we have to look big picture, where the numbers don't lie. Entering Sunday, the Lakers' starting lineup of Luka, LeBron, Reaves, Hachimura and Deandre Ayton was getting blitzed to the tune of minus-16.7 points per 100 possessions with what would rank as the worst defensive rating in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. 

Swap out LeBron for Marcus Smart and the Lakers jump to plus-14.7 with a 90th percentile defense. All told, the Lakers entered Sunday having lost LeBron's total minutes 59 points, and not a single one of the four lineups with which he has played more than 40 possessions boasted a positive rating. In fact, those lineups were a combined minus-82.2 per 100 possessions, per CTG. 

These are all still relatively small samples and, to be clear, LeBron is not the sole reason the Lakers are a trash defensive team. But he's certainly a real part of the problem with the Lakers need him, to whatever degree is possible for a 41-year-old guy, to be at least part of a solution.