Starting fives aren't the NBA tell-alls they used to be.

Not every team runs out its five best players for the opening tip. Reserves finish games. Crunch-time lineups are futzed and fiddled with depending on stylistic leanings. Teams can open big and finish small, or they may start small and close smaller.

The very concept of a starting lineup is more fluid. Head coaches will tinker with them to fit matchups. Wholesale changes are more common when another combination isn't playing up to snuff. Managing individual workloads with scheduled rest nights comes at the expense of continuity.

So when Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes reported the Los Angeles Lakers plan to start LeBron James at point guard next season, the news was, predictably, met with a certain indifference. 

Functionally, and despite doomed-from-the-start attempts to the contrary, he was already their floor general. He has always played that role. Point guard, point forward, primary playmaker—they're all the same damn thing.

Aren't they? 

They are, and they aren't. The overarching nature of James' role won't change. He is the vessel through which the offense will run. But starting him at point guard is a more official application of that role, and the Lakers will have to adjust accordingly.

James has seldom logged ample time without a card-carrying 1 by his side. He has started at point guard in the past less than scarcely, and his stints as the formal floor general barely register when factoring in lineup composition. Basketball Reference hasn't credited him with a point guard share since his rookie season. Cleaning the Glass doesn't catalog him there at all.

These at-a-glances are imperfect. Returns are warped by player heights, and positionless talents such as James are inherently difficult to classify. But the absence of an explicit point guard label does speak to the relative newness of the Lakers' undertaking. They're not impacting how James plays. They're changing how they flesh out the starting five around him.

Something has to give there. James is not matching up against point guards on defense. That would be a no-go even if his regular-season setting at the less glamorous end weren't already "disinterested."

The task must fall to someone else. And if we're assuming James is already the designated point guard, it won't be Alex Caruso, Quinn Cook or Rajon Rondo, none of whom are particularly inspiring options anyway. That includes the latter. Rondo's defensive reputation is long overblown. He grades out as the NBA's least valuable stopper since 2013-14, according to FiveThirtyEight's new DRAYMOND metric.

That leaves Avery Bradley, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Danny Green. Really, it's just Bradley and Caldwell-Pope. Green always profiled as a starter, and using him to cover point guards full-time eats away at the Lakers' wing defense, which they will have in short supply even if the super-long Talen Horton-Tucker earns an immediate rotation spot.

Either Bradley or KCP is fine. Caldwell-Pope's 6'5", 205-pound frame affords the Lakers more flexibility, but they're both worker bees on the ball. Green can slide up to the 3, and head coach Frank Vogel can either field a dual-big frontcourt with Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins/JaVale McGee or run a Kyle Kuzma-Davis tandem at the 4 and 5, respectively.

LeBron-at-point guard becomes suboptimal if the Lakers view it as a tool to go ultra-big. Pete Zayas from Laker Film Room expanded on this: 

Going with two bigs up front isn't out of the question. Davis' best position is the 5, but he can man power forward and has experience next to Cousins. The New Orleans Pelicans outscored opponents by 5.5 points per 100 possessions with both on the court in 2017-18 while posting a rock-solid 103.9 defensive rating. They were even better when those minutes came without Rondo.

Still, that was then. This is now. The 2019-20 Lakers are not the 2017-18 Pelicans. They don't have Jrue Holiday playing the best defense of his life. More importantly, they don't have a pre-Achilles-injury version of Cousins.

Starting McGee alongside Davis doesn't neutralize the problem. Nor is playing bigs the primary problem. The Lakers can get by with that setup if they're bringing Kuzma off the bench, but having him and James tackle 2s and 3s while Green takes on point guards is a disaster in waiting. 

Sticking Kuzma with the second unit alleviates part of the issue. The bench would get another wing, and the Lakers could start Green and someone to spare him and James from seeing time on point guards.

Defaulting to LeBron, Caldwell-Pope, Green, Davis and Cousins feels most likely. They may not close games with dual-big arrangements, but they signed two rotation centers after trading for Davis. They wouldn't do that if they're expecting him to sponge up 33-to-36 minutes per night at the 5. And they don't have the requisite overall depth to suggest they're planning around scheduled rest nights for their 26-year-old superstar.

Things change if the Lakers start Davis at center. On a related note: They should absolutely start Davis at center.

Even the Boogie-Brow Pelicans were at their peak as a one-big show. They notched elite offensive and defensive ratings when Davis played the 5 with Nikola Mirotic at the 4. That smaller look carried them past the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the playoffs. It even made for a couple of interesting games during their gentleman's sweep at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.

Filling out the rest of the Lakers' starting lineup with Caldwell-Pope, Green and Kuzma while James runs point would diversify the offense without damaging what didn't forecast as a great defense in the first place. Maybe the Lakers would sacrifice their presence on the glass. They'll be fine.

They also might not have to worry about it. They grabbed 75.9 percent of opponents' misses last season when James and Kuzma played without Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram. That's good enough. 

The Lakers did cough up almost 110 points per 100 possessions during those stretches. That's not as good. It isn't terrible, either. McGee and Tyson Chandler were the primary centers in those lineups. Davis is in another galaxy. And Green is better—or at least more reliable—than any of the other perimeter defenders the Lakers rostered last season.

Pick-and-roll chemistry between James and Davis, meanwhile, should develop more naturally if they're connecting at the 1-5 spots and surrounded by shooters. Push-back will be given for referring to Caldwell-Pope and Kuzma as shooters. Whatever. They are spacing upgrades over a frontcourt that rolls out Davis at the 4 and Cousins at the 5.

Green canned 47.4 percent of his spot-up threes and 51.3 percent of his wide-open triples last season. Caldwell-Pope put down 36.7 and 38.8 percent, respectively. Kuzma shot just 31.7 and 31.9 percent, but he was much more efficient on these looks as a rookie. 

Besides, Cousins wasn't any better. He hit 26.4 percent of his catch-and-shoot treys and 29.2 percent of his uncontested long balls with the Warriors. 

Staggering his minutes off the bench just make more sense. He'll have more opportunities to cook as a featured option and won't have to vie for touches as often with both Davis and James.

Going this route does thin out the Lakers' wing depth. That's not a deal-breaker. Short of stumbling into Andre Iguodala on the buyout market if the Memphis Grizzlies waive him, they'll be shallow at those spots no matter what.

Bringing Kuzma off the bench would help the shot-creation, but they'll get enough of that from Cousins and Cook, plus Rondo's table-setting. And the Lakers aren't putting Kuzma in the second unit to steady the defense. Jared Dudley is that guiding light: 

Take this with a metric ton of salt, but the Lakers obliterated opponents last season in the 209 possessions Caldwell-Pope, James and Kuzma tallied without Ball, Ingram and Rondo. Small sample sizes are hardly a license to draw meaningful conclusions, and this year's roster is drastically different.

And yet, at the risk of oversimplifying the logistics, it bears mentioning: If Caldwell-Pope, James and Kuzma worked so well under those circumstances last season, imagine how much better they'd be with Green and Davis.

Ideal Lakers Starting Five: LeBron James, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma, Anthony Davis

Key Reserves: Rajon Rondo, Quinn Cook, Avery Bradley, Jared Dudley, DeMarcus Cousins

Deeper-Rotation Pieces: Alex Caruso, Troy Daniels, Talen Horton-Tucker, JaVale McGee

Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference or Cleaning the Glass. Salary and cap-hold information via Basketball Insiders and RealGM.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale) and listen to his Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by B/R's Andrew Bailey.