The Lakers rode their new starting lineup to a massive victory against the Thunder, but it doesn’t mean the move should be permanent.

By 2023 standards, this squad is almost hilariously bereft of shooting. Throughout their careers, Prince, Reddish, and Vanderbilt have combined for just 3.24 3-point attempts per game. Despite his ups and downs this season, Prince has shot rather decently. Reddish and Vanderbilt are seldom defended. This increases the amount of traffic near the rim for James and Davis. On Saturday, they handled it quite nicely. They won’t always be able to, however. The objective here should be to make James’ life simpler, not harder.

That is done via space. Extra ball-handling also helps. After all, there’s a reason James advocated for the catastrophic Russell Westbrook deal. At this point in his career, he prefers to play forward rather than point guard. Reaves and Russell were two additional ball-handlers in the Lakers’ starting five during their playoff run last season. They didn’t have any on Saturday. James can manage the burden for a game and most likely for a month. that’s ridiculous to expect him to do that for a whole season. He will be 39 years old before the end of December.

When Reaves was benched in November, part of the reasoning was to keep him as far away from Russell as possible for defensive considerations. If they both sit out the opening few minutes of each half, it becomes far more difficult to do so without significantly reducing their minutes. Reaves played 28 minutes, while Russell played 17. They combined to average 60.6 following the trade deadline last season. An offense that is now ranked 24th cannot afford to play its secondary and tertiary ball-handlers so seldom.

Theoretically, the gain is defensive improvement. On that end of the floor, the outcomes were mixed. Oklahoma City scored 23 points in the nine minutes it faced that unit, and that figure might have been higher if the Thunder had hit more of the open three-point shots the Lakers provided them.