The Los Angeles Lakers got off to a roaring start to the season and emerged as one of the NBA's best teams, but as the season has gone on Los Angeles has come back to earth some. 

While they've been bolstered by the MVP-level play of Luka Doncic this season, the Lakers haven't been able to enjoy the combined force of their Big Three in Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves as much as they would have liked at this point, but when the three do play together, the Lakers are capable of something special.

The luxury of health is something that any championship contending would rather have, but the Lakers depend on the health of their stars more than most, which reveals another one of their problems. 

James illustrated the problems of the Lakers' lack of health and their dependance on their star players during an episode of Mind the Game, a podcast he co-hosts with retired NBA-great Steve Nash.

"We're playing good ball at times, but the number one thing for us is health," James said. "We haven't been set up to the point where's there's a lot of room for error... It's not trying to get his [Doncic] numbers. It's about, how can we get enough minutes and chemistry?"

The Lakers clearly need Doncic to get going, and considering how well the Slovenian star has been playing this season, that's appeared easy at times. Even during stretches where he has been injured, Reaves has been able to step up as an elite player and take over games. 

But basketball is still a team sport and putting so much reliance on the skills of two or three players for the rest of the roster to be able to click is a fragile strategy. 

James likened the situation to the team's mentality when Anthony Davis was with the Lakers. If Davis went down, it reverberated through the mentality of the rest of the team and left them feeling lost on the court.

James pressed that what the team needs to do to adapt to Doncic's absence, as the Lakers star has been out since Feb. 5 with a hamstring injury, though he did appear over All-Star Weekend, was not try to replace Doncic, but simply focus on playing good basketball as a team. 

Having the team depend on playing to the stars on the court so often seems to have affected the roster's overall chemistry and that the rest of the team aren't quite sure how to play with each other. 

Part of this issue is overall roster depth, but the other part of it is a mentality problem. 

The latter issue can at least be worked on in time for the postseason, where the Lakers hope to compete for another NBA championship.