Long season they need to stay healthy. That has been their downfall is they can't stay on the court for long stretches of the season. If AD can stay healthy they will contend. Also need to trade for another piece. A deep threat wing or shooting guard to space the floor more would go a long way on that team.
I have this bad feeling that the Lakers will be nothing again when AD is injured. That should not be the case. They cannot be an AD-dependent team because they won't know what could happen.
Darvin Ham should try to bench him and experiment with some player combinations. Maybe in times of a back to back games.
There's one game where he didn't play but that's against the Spurs, one of the weakest teams in the league now and they only won by 5 points in a high-scoring game AD-less.
I do not think they can afford to bench AD yet. He is at his prime right now and the Lakers should not waste it. They are still catching up with wins, they badly needed, to at least get up to top 10 for a possible play in. Maybe, when they are in a comfortable position in rankings, they can give some rest to AD either by not playing back-to-back or giving less minutes to rest his body. They cannot afford AD getting injured, but they also cannot afford to sit AD out. A very difficult situation for Darvin Ham to balance.
Here we will see how good of a coach he is. He once said he had plans for Westbrook so maybe this is the time to use that. If ever there's really a plan or he just said that to avoid locker room problems because of rumors that will come in.
Bad things could happen, after watching the Warriors play against the Rockets earlier I saw some near-injury accidents from Steph and Jordan Poole.
I think now I understand why Steve Kerr is not forcing to put back Steph even if the 2nd team is not doing well.
Rests are important, especially in back-to-back games. Better to lose 1 game than lose him the whole season.