LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

Come on he knew it was game.there there was so little time on the clock that they needed to play perfect ball and you miss an open layup you can't come back from that

If anything you can get on home for being flat I the 3rd but I don't know what Vogel is doing with these stupid lineups and letting Drummond get punked byAyton over and over again

 

The one plus is the ankle must be doing better. These two sequences were really impressive at any age.

 

Bron’s triceps almost to his shoulder joint was above the rim on that GOAT to GOAT Sports Center highlight.

 

this.

he is older and he isn’t dumb. No point in expending too much energy in a game that was clearly over.

 

Game was over , down 4 at the halftime ?

 

I'd say we didn't take this game seriously from the get go and as a leader he failed in this aspect .

Highlight dunks and clowning Crowder is cool but playing with a sense of urgency as he and the team did in the 4th is the way to go.

Not sure in what world he thought we could relax up 2-1 in the series against the 2nd seed after the kind of regular season we just had ...

Well on to Game 5 , he better dominate as I previously said

 

In this world, on Earth, is where he can relax against the Phoenix Suns. Remind me how many Finals appearances Chris Paul has? Phoenix has in the last decade?

I highly doubt that Lebron, who lives in the Finals, is concerned at all about Phoenix. We’ll win in 6, with or without AD. Book it.

 

^ bookmarked...

 

Suns are a good team , well organized on both sides . We still should advance if Lebron is allowed to dominate by Vogel from the start of game 5 but I doubt it so things will get more complicated than it should be .

 

Agree they are definitely a good team.

Lebron will dominate, as long as he physically can. When the chips are down, Frank Vogel will step aside and let the King eat.

 

Lebron should just play the point and do P & R with Marc or Kieff because he's not generating enough production in 1 on 1 situations. He keeps jabbing 22 feet from the basket to take long Js and it shows his indecision.

 

Going to need a couple legacy games and then hopefully AD can push through it with moderate success next round.

 

Folks are way too confident about beating Phoenix IMO. It's one of those weird series that AD just is a crazy mismatch: with a healthy AD series Phoenix even as a 2 seed is an easy playoff team for the Lakers to overcome but without him it's 50/50. I agree Lebron was taking this game lightly but that's also because he's 36, not fully healthy, and with AD around.

With KCP hurt as well and Lebron's conditioning off, I wouldn't really contest too hard anyone who has the Suns with the edge now. Even without AD, pre Lebron ankle injury and I think the Lakers win but he doesn't look the same to me even. His burst hasn't come back even though his vertical has

 

If we get marginally better at 3 point shooting, free throws and finishing off lay-ups, we win this series. It's a big IF though... our finishing has been disappointing lately.

 

True ... but as fans we want to believe playoffs Lebron is coming and don't think about getting eliminated in the 1st round

 

there's a not-insignificant contingent of fans here who think AD is sort of useless (apparently they missed the title run last year?) and that we'll be just fine without him.

i think lebron's going to have to be near-perfect for us to win, tbh. AD and kcp being out means our defense is going to be down two important cogs who play big minutes, neither of whom has a sensible replacement on the bench. so, we'll have to score. and lebron can orchestrate that, but it will be a heavy load.

long-term, we have zero title aspirations if AD isn't 85% or better, imo. i don't care if lebron goes fire-breathing dragon, our ace in the hole was AD at the 5 against most teams. markieff morris at the 5 doesn't cut it.

 

I think a lot of us (or at least me) were thinking AD (and to an extent LeBron) were pretty healthy but rusty. If they were rusty, we'd pull out a competitive series against the Suns in 6 and keep getting better as we went along.

Now its becoming more clear how much these guys were truly injured. AD and KCP being completely out and LeBron not being at full strength completely changes everything.

I'm not nearly as confident as I was before the series and certainly wouldn't be too shocked at this point if we ended up losing. I won't be too hard on the team though because the last couple of seasons were completely unprecedented and clearly took their toll on everyone physically (and probably more mentally than we will know until someone like Dudley opens up about it in a few years). We had a chance at repeating under normal circumstances but this was anything but. I haven't completely given up but we need a lot to go our way in this series to pull it out.