Norman Powell spent the better part of four seasons sharing a city with the Los Angeles Lakers, and now that he has moved on to Chicago, he has a verdict on his old neighbors.
Asked by streamer N3on to name the most overrated team in the NBA during a livestream whose clips spread across X on Saturday, the Bulls guard needed just a few words.
N3on: “Who is the most overrated team in the NBA?”
Norman Powell: “Ima say the Lakers bro” pic.twitter.com/t6uof6Owuw
— Lakers Daily (@LakersDailyCom) September 12, 2026
It is the kind of answer that travels quickly in September, when there are no games to argue about and every roster is still a hypothesis. It also raises an obvious follow-up question, which is overrated by whom.
The people who put actual money on these things are not carrying much Lakers hype right now, and neither is the beat that covers the team every day.
What Powell said, and where he is coming from
The exchange was a throwaway moment in a longer stream, but it was picked up quickly. Los Angeles brought in Walker Kessler, Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton to surround Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, which is a lot of new parts for JJ Redick to fit together before opening night.
Powell knows the Los Angeles market better than most visiting players. The Clippers acquired him in 2022 and kept him until a three-team trade sent him to Miami in the summer of 2025, so he spent three-plus seasons playing in the same building as the Lakers and, later, across town at Intuit Dome.
In his one season with the Heat he averaged 21.7 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game and made his first All-Star team. That earned him a payday.
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported a two-year, $45 million agreement with the Bulls on July 1, and the signing became official July 10 with a team option on the second year. Chicago went 31-51 last season and has now missed the playoffs four years running, which is worth keeping in mind for a later section.
Who is actually overrating the Lakers?
Here is where Powell’s take runs into a wall. Sportsbooks are the one group that has to be honest about expectations, because being wrong costs them money, and the current board does not treat the Lakers as a team anyone is inflating.
Covers’ most recent update of the 2027 title market, dated July 28 and sourced to bet365, lists the Lakers at +3500. The top 10 on that board runs from the Spurs and Thunder at +260 down to the Cavaliers at +2800, and Los Angeles is not on it.
At +3500, the implied probability of a Lakers title works out to roughly 2.8 percent before the sportsbook’s margin is stripped out. That is a team priced as a playoff participant with a puncher’s chance, not a contender the public is overvaluing.
The local read is even more telling. The Athletic’s Jovan Buha framed his latest mailbag around the doubts, not the hype. One of the questions he chose to answer this week, per his own post on X, was blunt.
“Why is everyone so low on the defense?” Buha wrote in the mailbag preview.
Another of his prompts asked whether Doncic could win MVP if the Lakers overachieve relative to expectations, which is not a question you ask about a team the world thinks is too good.
When the beat writer who covers the team every day is fielding questions about why the consensus is so pessimistic, “overrated” is a hard label to make stick.
The LeBron factor
Part of what makes this a strange moment to call the Lakers overhyped is that the biggest name in the building just left. LeBron James agreed to a two-year, $8 million deal with the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Sixers’ title price collapsed from +2700 to +900 almost immediately.
The Lakers’ number did not move in the other direction. The market absorbed James’ departure, looked at a roster built around a 27-year-old Doncic and a 28-year-old Reaves, and kept Los Angeles in the same tier it was already in.
If there is a team that got overrated this summer, the odds suggest it is the one James joined, not the one he left. None of that means the Lakers are underrated, either.
A defense built around Kessler and a bench that turned over almost entirely is a legitimate question, and the West still runs through Oklahoma City and San Antonio. The point is narrower than that.
Whatever Powell is reacting to, it is not a market or a media consensus that has this team too high.
The irony in Powell’s own locker room
What makes the comment land a little differently is how Powell talks about his own situation. In an August interview with Mark Medina, he spent a good deal of time pushing back on the idea that the Bulls should be dismissed before the season starts.
“I know the media will count us out and say we’re not good enough,” Powell said.
He went on to describe his job in Chicago as installing self-belief on a young roster and raising expectations both inside and outside the building.
It is a reasonable posture for a 33-year-old veteran on a team that has not seen the playoffs in four years. It is also a posture that sits awkwardly next to calling a 50-win division rival’s neighbor overrated on a stream.
A player who bristles at his own team being underestimated is, at minimum, an interesting messenger for the argument that another team is getting too much credit.
There is likely a simpler explanation. The Lakers occupy more airtime than any team in the league regardless of where they sit in the standings, and “overrated” is an easy reflex for anyone who has spent years listening to that coverage from the other locker room in Los Angeles.
Attention and expectation are not the same thing, and Powell’s answer reads like a comment on the former.
What it means for the Lakers
Practically, nothing. Powell’s Bulls are in the Eastern Conference, the two teams will meet twice, and the Lakers have far larger questions to answer in camp than how a former Clipper feels about them.
Redick has to sort out a frontcourt rotation with Kessler and Mamukelashvili, decide how much of the offense runs through Reaves when Doncic sits, and figure out whether a roster that lost James can defend at a playoff level.
What the comment does do is set a frame the Lakers will hear all year. Every early loss will be treated as proof that the skeptics were right, and every winning streak will be treated as proof of the hype Powell was talking about.
The team’s first chance to answer either way comes when the preseason opens, and until then the most useful thing to say about the Lakers is that the people with money on the line are not overrating them at all.
