Ayton to Lakers = Contender Status | Windhorst Says LeBron’s Locked In

SportsLand

03/07/2025

🔥 According to Brian Windhorst, the Los Angeles Lakers are now legitimate NBA title contenders following the signing of Deandre Ayton. The veteran ESPN insider believes this move not only boosts the Lakers’ roster but reignites LeBron James’s hunger for another championship.

With a revamped core of LeBron, Anthony Davis, and Ayton, Windhorst says the Lakers are built to dominate in 2025. In this NBA Today segment, he breaks down why Ayton is the perfect fit, what this means for team chemistry, and how LeBron is more motivated than ever.

Is this the year LeBron reclaims the throne? Watch the full analysis right here.

Hashtags:
#Lakers #LeBronJames #DeandreAyton #BrianWindhorst #NBA2025 #LakersNation #NBATitleRun #AytonToLakers #ESPN #NBAToday

Keyword Tags:
Lakers contender status, Deandre Ayton Lakers signing, Windhorst LeBron take, LeBron ready to dominate, NBA title prediction, Lakers big three 2025, Ayton impact on Lakers, LeBron James championship run, Lakers roster upgrade, Lakers ESPN analysis, NBA power rankings

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00:00your deal. That fills the center position. What does Aiton bring to this current Laker lineup?

00:06Look, DeAndre Aiton was the number one overall draft pick in the 2018 draft, a draft that

00:10obviously featured Luka Doncic going third and eventually getting traded to the Dallas Mavericks.

00:15And Aiton is a talented player. He was part of the 2021 finals. Participants with the Phoenix

00:21Suns was a big part of that team. But he's a guy with massive physical talent who has been

00:26inconsistent throughout his career. That's why he's been bought out this year by Portland,

00:30giving him a chance to get into the free agent market and going to the Los Angeles Lakers,

00:35who obviously, as you pointed out, Gary, desperately need a center. This is a big opportunity for DeAndre

00:39Aiton. If he has a good season there, he can reset his market, reset the perception of him

00:44around the league. And there really couldn't be a better situation for him. He's playing with Luka

00:48Doncic, an incredible passer, a guy who could set him up for lobs at the rim. He's had a ton of

00:53success with that. LeBron James, one of the greatest passers of all time. We'll see if Aiton

00:57can take advantage of him. Inconsistent yet steady. Aiton, the first player to average 10 points and

01:0110 boards in his first seven seasons. Check one. Only for the Knicks, it was check one, check two,

01:07check three. You get the point because the Knicks have their next head coach expected to hire Mike

01:11Brown. That according to ESPN's Sham Sharania. But it's been an exhaustive and exhausting search

01:16for New York, requesting and being denied permission for five current NBA head coaches,

01:21interviewing several available coaches and going through multi-round stages with several

01:26candidates. Brown replacing Tom Thibodeau. Now, Mike Brown has been known to give teams a boost

01:31when taking over as a head coach. 05 took over a Cavs team, not made the playoffs since 1998,

01:36got them from 42 wins to 50 and a spot in the Eastern Conference semifinals. He won coach of the

01:41year that year with Cleveland in 09. Brown, second stint in the land, 2013 to 14. Wine and gold,

01:48well, taking the team that won 24 games the year before, getting up to 33 wins. He was then let go

01:54and replaced by David Blatt. And LeBron made his return. That lasted a long time. Soon after,

02:002022 to 23. Brown helping the Kings to an 18-win improvement. A win-provement, nailed it. Reached

02:05the playoffs for the first time until 506, snapping the longest drought in NBA history. Brown won coach.

02:12Moving, he will be the next head coach of the Knicks and he is certainly bringing with him a ton of

02:17head coaching experience. Most recently with the Kings, Brown has a 454 and 304 record as a head

02:23coach with the Cavaliers, the Lakers, and most recently, again, the Kings. We welcome in our

02:29senior NBA writer, Tim Bontemps in the program. Tim, great to see you. A lot of talk around this move

02:34by the Knicks. Give New York fans a reason to be hopeful by this hire. Well, yeah, Gary, good to see

02:41you too. And yes, Mike Brown is now the Knicks head coach and there is a lot of indifference,

02:45I would say, around this hire. It's not a super exciting or sexy hire, right? Especially after

02:50the Knicks went out and tried to get a few sitting head coaches to take this job after firing Tom

02:55Thibodeau after making the conference finals for the first time in 25 years. But if you want an

02:59analog to Knicks history of Knicks fans alike, go back 30 years ago to 1995 when the Yankees coming

03:05off losing in the playoffs, fired Buck Showalter, a very popular head coach, and Joe Torre was hired to be

03:11the manager of the Yankees. At that point, Joe Torre had never won a playoff game in his career,

03:16like Mike Brown, who's 55 years old, like Mike Brown, head coach with three teams prior to coming

03:22to the Yankees. And then Joe Torre obviously went on to have an incredible run over the next 12 years

03:26with the Yankees making the playoffs every year, winning four world championships, bringing the

03:31Yankees back to the top of the sport after being on the sidelines from the championship picture for the

03:35prior 20 years before that. So for a Knicks fan base that is desperately waiting to snap what is a 52-year

03:42championship drought now, their hope would certainly be that Mike Brown could do what Joe Torre did back

03:46then. Yeah, the parallels are certainly fair, but if we're talking about... Dealing is the roof.

03:52We're always going to look at LeBron James through the lens of can he compete for a championship because

03:57that's the standard that he established for himself, not just with the way that he played, but what he said

04:02out of his mouth. Once upon a time, this is the guy that said, I'm chasing ghosts. Like, the guy that

04:06I'm pursuing is not even in the NBA. He retired 20 years ago. Like, that's what he said. He was chasing

04:10after Michael Jordan. That was the guy that he was trying to compete in. So everything that he does

04:16has been to try to catch up and try to eclipse Michael Jordan as the greatest player of all time.

04:23So, of course, the standard is the standard when it comes to any LeBron James-led team. We're going to

04:28view it through the lens of whether or not they compete and win a championship, and if they don't,

04:33it's a failed season. Yeah, I don't think anything about that has ever changed. Now, I don't know that

04:40it's realistic to expect the Lakers to compete for a championship this upcoming season, but that

04:45doesn't move the goalposts in terms of how we're going to look at LeBron James because he established

04:51that standard for himself. That's the level of greatness that we assign to LeBron just based

04:59on what we've seen from him over the last two dozen years. So I guess when it comes to whether

05:06or not it's championship or bust for LeBron, I don't necessarily know that we move off of

05:13that because in your age 41 season, what else are you playing for if not to compete for a championship?

05:19But I guess the other part is just because it's unrealistic based on the roster that he has to

05:25work with to win a championship, it doesn't mean that we let him off the hook in terms of the standard

05:30by which we judge him and his greatness. Because listen, when you're in the conversation for being

05:35the greatest of all time, the standard does not change, right? If you are a top five player of all time,

05:43and I think a lot of people universally regard him as that, if you're a top five player of all time,

05:49then people are going to look at you as a player that can consistently put his team in the mix to

05:55compete for a championship. So that is going to be how we judge LeBron. I think it's interesting

06:01that when it became obvious that he wasn't going to catch Michael Jordan with ring count,

06:06that LeBron has started to rail against ring culture. It's interesting how self-serving that is

06:14because a decade before that, this was the same guy that was talking about chasing ghosts,

06:18meaning chasing down Michael Jordan in terms of the total rings. When it became obvious that he

06:22wasn't going to get there, now all of a sudden there's a problem with ring culture. Again,

06:26we don't get to move the goalposts. The standard is the standard by which you judge all time greats.

06:32And so it will always be championship or bust for LeBron James, even though I don't look at it as

06:39championship or bust for the Lakers upcoming season. It's funny. You mentioned that because

06:42when you were talking about that, I remember that mind the game podcast CC. It's like you in my head

06:47when he talked about that with JJ Reddick and also Steve Nash and whole ring culture and attaching

06:53rings to guys and trying to dilute their greatness. And I said, nobody's dilute diluting your greatness

06:58when it comes to that. But when you're trying to move the goalposts now to try to soften the

07:04landing, people shouldn't buy that from LeBron James. You buy that from other people who maybe

07:09have one championship and may not get another championship. When you're acclaimed on that

07:14Mount Rushmore basketball players in the history of the great sport, that's the NBA, the great

07:19sport that is basketball. You can try to move the goalposts all you want, but people are not going

07:23to buy what you're trying to sell, especially when you're the one that established that LeBron James

07:28has been very, very calculated to make sure he goes to the best situation to win championships.

07:33And I'm not faulting him for that. He realized he couldn't do it in Cleveland the first time

07:37because no one was going to go to Cleveland to play with him, to be a Robin to his Batman.

07:41So he's able to find a way to have the monsters of the galaxy and go to Miami to be with Dwayne

07:46Wade and Chris Bosh. And that worked out. But when he sensed that that end of that road was coming up,

07:51that they couldn't be continuing for championships. Then his mind wandered back towards Cleveland

07:55where they already had Kyrie Irving. They go get a Kevin Love. They bring in Ty Lue as a head coach

07:59and the land that was for you winning a championship. When he realized that was exhausted,

08:04he decided to look elsewhere and go to Los Angeles Lakers and they made it work for him.

08:07So I'm not going to blame LeBron James for doing everything he can to stack a squad

08:11or to be a part of a team or a squad to win a championship. But you can't, to your point,

08:16you can't do that now when you realize this is the end of the road for your career. This is the

08:23end of the road in terms of talking about being a championship contender. You established that

08:27standard by what you've done in previous years with previous teams. You can't just all of a sudden

08:32turn around now and say, don't attach ring culture to me because that's not fair. That fairness went

08:38out the window the minute you decided to go from team to team to team to make it better for you to

08:42win the championship. Yeah. I don't know that we've seen a more curated superstar experience

08:46in professional team sports than what LeBron James did over the last 22 years. And I know

08:53that's a big statement, but the history around it matters when we start talking about the rings

08:58and judging the greatest players of all time, right? When you look at Michael Jordan, listen,

09:04he played the majority of his career in one place, the heart of his prime in one place.

09:08When we look at LeBron James, we saw him be able to stack teams, get his preferred coaches,

09:15sometimes preferred front office. When it comes to how we're going to judge him,

09:22that all matters. And here's the other thing that I will say, hypothetical that we'll never be able

09:27to prove, but let's just say LeBron James batted a thousand rather than batting 500 in the NBA finals

09:34with the Miami heat. Okay. Well, then all of a sudden you're talking about him being at six rings.

09:38You think LeBron James would rail against ring culture? If he had as many championship rings

09:44as Michael Jordan, again, hypothetical, we'll never be able to prove. But my point is this,

09:49it feels very self-serving the narratives that LeBron James has been trying to put out there

09:53in order to change the math or move the goalposts in terms of the standard by which we judge him.

10:00But listen, I'm not falling for the banana in the tailpipe. The standard is the standard for LeBron.

10:05If you're chasing ghosts, if you want to put yourself next to Michael Jordan,

10:10there, we're going to do the tail of the tape. We're going to stack the resumes and see how it

10:14falls. And right now you come up short and based on what's on the horizon, you'd be hard pressed to

10:20believe that he's ever going to catch MJ. So yeah, the reality is that LeBron James's standard does not

10:28change, even though the expectations for the team that he's on this upcoming season are going to be

10:35lower than that. When you've been self-serving and like, I'll say it out loud again. I don't

10:41fall for LeBron James for trying to make sure he's in the best possible position. No, I don't either.

10:45I don't either. If you got, if you got the swing to do it, do it. If you have that leverage,

10:51then do it. No doubt. Athletes are always trying.

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