Is he encouraged that the games have been close?
Los Angeles Lakers All-Star power forward LeBron James has seen a lot of basketball in his 20 NBA seasons. After all, the man has led 10 clubs to the NBA Finals and won four titles (including most recently in 2020, for your Lakers).
So you can probably guess how he feels about a pair of regular season games in December that his new-look Lakers didn’t quite close out.
James is used to playing on teams that win 50-60 games and head deep into the postseason. He is less than used to being the second-best player on any club, certainly not one that is a mere 11-16 through its first two months, which describes the 18-time All-Star’s current predicament.
Most recently, the Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics yesterday in overtime, 122-118, after a valiant comeback got the game competitive at the end of the third quarter. Anthony Davis missed a pair of critical free throws that could have closed out the contest, and L.A. subsequently ran out of steam in overtime.
A similar scenario befell Los Angeles on Friday, when the team almost stole a road victory from another, worse Eastern Conference playoff club, the Philadelphia 76ers, but missed free throws from Davis and Austin Reaves forced the game into overtime, where the Lakers looked totally gassed, scoring just two points and ultimately falling 133-122 to Philly.
When asked a somewhat leading question by a reporter during a postgame presser after the Boston loss, regarding what it could say about L.A. that the team almost beat two good Eastern Conference franchises in the 76ers on Friday and the Celtics on Tuesday, James was curt. “Nothing,” he said. “That we lost. You’re talking to the wrong guy, talking about ‘almost win.’ No. We lost.”
It’s good that he is peeved. He should be. He and Davis did all that they could, but they just don’t quite have the depth to get them over the hump in a lot of these close games. For his part, James played for 42:47, scored 33 points on 14-of-25 shooting, had a near triple-double with nine rebounds and nine assists, swiped two steals and chipped in a block. He did miss what could have been a game-winning shot of his own as time expired in the fourth quarter of the Celtics game, but that’s kind of picking at nits.
Across 46:01, Davis scored 37 points on 13-of-24 shooting from the floor and 11-of-15 shooting rom the line, pulled down 12 boards, dished out three dimes, and swiped a steal and blocked a shot to round out his box score.
The real issue, in this writer’s opinion, was that the team went away from Davis in the extra period, relying on Russell Westbrook to generate a lot of its offense for some reason.
