LeBron James Reveals 'Most Important' Thing for Lakers in Final Stretch

With the NBA All-Star break officially over after Sunday's game at the Intuit Dome, the Los Angeles Lakers will get back to work on Feb. 20, playing host to Kawhi Leonard and the division rival Los Angeles Clippers at Crypto.com Arena.

The final 28 regular-season games will be challenging for the Lakers, as the team faces a brutal schedule against some of the best teams in the league, all of which will try to improve their position in the standings ahead of the NBA playoffs, which get underway on April 18.

LeBron James Believes Lakers Need to Be Healthy to Make a Run

Ahead of the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, LeBron James spoke to the media and was asked what he feels the Lakers need to do to be successful for the rest of the 2025-26 campaign.

"Most important for our ball club right now is health," James said. "I can’t state it any more clear. Not quite sure how many games we’ve had where we’ve had a full roster. We’re over the halfway point and there’s not been many games. Obviously, I know it’s been a lot more than over half, for sure, and probably even plus that.

"Our success is going to come down to obviously our health. Our coaching staff putting us in the right position, I think they’re going to give us a game plan every night. But when it comes down to what we have to work with, we have to actually go out and see it. We haven’t been privy to having that opportunity much this year."

Along with prioritizing health in the final stretch of the regular season, James was asked what he thinks the Lakers can accomplish moving forward. He isn't sure what the team's ceiling is in the final stretch because of the new players and the need to stay healthy in the final 28 games.

"It's hard to say because this is a new group," James said. "We added DA and Marcus and Jake, just got a new acquisition on our ball club a couple games ago. It's too hard to really say what we're capable of.

"I know that when we've played some of our best basketball of the season, we've looked very good. On the other side, when we've been terrible, we've looked disgusting. So, I think the most important is, if we can get healthy, how many minutes we can be on the floor, how much chemistry we can build with this sprint starting.

"You would hope that you could have the regular season to kind of build that cohesiveness and things of that nature, but I'm hoping that, if we can get healthy, we can start to build that."

Only time will tell what the immediate future holds for the Lakers, as they will need a healthy James, Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves to lead the way while holding off some of the best teams in the Western Conference, which will be no easy task even if the team stays healthy.