Podcast: Can Brandon Ingram and LeBron James fit together?

As things currently stand, the Los Angeles Lakers are a game above .500 despite a tough early schedule, suspensions, an injury to the team’s starting point guard, LeBron James forgetting how to hit free throws late in close games and all kinds of excitement in-between.

With all of that said, fans can remain optimistic about this team. And if they really want to look for the first source of said optimism, they need look no further than the combination of wings who haven’t really figured things out quite yet: James and Brandon Ingram.

Thus far this season, Ingram’s production has come while James has been on the bench. Sure, that might work for stretches and technically speaking it’s nice that Ingram can manage the bench unit potentially, but if the Lakers really want to reach their potential this season, it’ll have to come on the backs of those two together.

It comes down to math, though. When the games start to matter more, James is going to play 32+ minutes a night. Ingram will be on the court 30+ plus, himself, and so at some point, their minutes workload is going to overlap. If they can’t figure out ways to remain productive together, the team’s ceiling becomes lower.

On today’s episode of the “Locked on Lakers” podcast, Pete and I discuss whether we think they can make it work, and what that might eventually look like. We think it very much behooves the Lakers to continue to experiment with finding ways for Ingram and James to be effective alongside one another. As they do, that optimism I mentioned early becomes all the more warranted.

As always, this is just a tidbit of the full context given in the show. Listen to the full discussion below and please check out old episodes, or guarantee you won’t miss any ever again by subscribing to either “The Silver Screen and Roll Podcast” or “Locked on Lakers” on iTunes.