On Thursday, Los Angeles Lakers president Magic Johnson made an appearance on SiriusXM Radio to discuss the state of the Lakers franchise and, inevitably, superstar forward LeBron James. In the process, the Hall of Fame point guard turned professional sports executive would tell the radio analysts that the assertions recently made by ESPN senior writer Brian Windhorst — that James was ignoring play calls given to him by Lakers head coach Luke Walton — were wrong.

Quote transcribed by CBS Sports‘ DJ Siddiqi:

“Brian got it wrong. This is all about making sure that they can say something on ESPN and everybody can just talk,” said Johnson. “We have a system the ball moves around, a lot of pick-and-roll plays. If you watch us play, the ball is not in LeBron James' hands all of the time. It can't be. Because you want to pass it around, you want to get into your pick-and-roll plays. But hey, we're the Lakers, people are going to be talking about us. But that's not how it's going right now.”

It's typical, though, that James has little respect for his head coaches because they're inexperienced and, even if former players, role players whose talent doesn't match up to the magnitude of James' gifts. Further, with James' age (33 years old and due to turn 34 years old in December), his combination of talent and seniority seems to undermine the authority given to coaches who are given the responsibility and challenge of bringing the best out of one of the game's all-time greats.

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Nonetheless, the idea that James has been as much of an on-ball playmaker with the Los Angeles Lakers as he was with teams in the past is incorrect. Though James surely audibles on plenty of play calls he hears from the bench and has evidently played with the ball more in his hands with veteran point guard Rajon Rondo out of the lineup, he has shown more of a willingness to trust a multitude of players to make plays off the dribble than he has in recent years.

With Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram and Kyle Kuzma having the ability to be dynamic playmakers, James would be foolish not to allow the young and talented players on his roster to have opportunities to dominate, and he has done so plenty of times. In fact, the main similarity with James' play this season and in recent seasons is that he'll allow his teammates to try to get hot before he worries about his own shot