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Context is king. For six consecutive offseasons, the question coming out of southern California about that market’s favorite NBA franchise was “Have the Lakers improved enough for LeBron James?”

James, after all, became the driving force behind the Lakers once he signed there as a free agent in July 2018, with an implicit expectation that he wanted to add to his personal championship rings total, as surely as the team hoped to resume hanging banners. Their first year together wasn’t nearly competitive enough — the 37-45 record was James’ worst since his rookie season, and it had been 14 years since his team failed to make the playoffs.

Each autumn thereafter, the overarching issue remained th

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