LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

Well to be fair, bringing up Kobe/MJ or whoever is pointless cause one can easily retort that they were washed at the same point in time Lebron is at. We all tend to judge him like he is in his prime and he certainly is paid like he’s in his prime, but reality is the man is 38 going on 39 and isn’t getting any younger.

As for last night, looking at things objectively, he was up and down. He took too many threes, and left Olynyk open for three numerous times. He also appeared to be the reason Olynyk got that breakaway off the jump ball in OT.

On the flipside, He hit a big 3 ball to tie it when the Jazz had all the momentum on a 13-0 run and he scored 9 of our 11 points in OT including clutch ft's with less than a minute to go, and a tough go-ahead layup at the rim that ultimately won the game. In the end, the pros ended up out weighing the cons.

 

Definitely Lebron is not as good as he used to be. Neither was Kareem this late in his career, neither was Kobe this late in his career. But I tell you what, I have NEVER seen a player this late in his career be as good as Lebron is right now.

Can't pick nits with this, get the players to surround him and attempt to cover his "OLD MAN" weaknesses. He can still do a lot of things really well. Appreciate him while you got him folks, ain't gonna be for much longer!

If he wins this year, or next, I think he may retire.

 

Let's also remember that he's back earlier than expected, managing a live injury (that may require offseason surgery), and working on getting back into his playing groove. Much rather deal with any ups and downs in that now than with 1-2 games left in the season or in the play-in.

 

I agree with that. He's by far the best old man I've ever seen in the nba so I can appreciate that. It definitely isn't easy preparing for games at that age and he's able to still play at an extremely high level. It's unprecedented.

 

Did anyone else, if watching on time shift, run back that play I think was in the third quarter ..... where LeBron was out by the left center of the 3 point line and with a "lightning" first step (for a 38 years old, 240lb, 6'8" player, with over 3 extra seasons on his body in a 20 year career from all the playoffs) .... split two defenders to go to the rim for a layup? I ran it back 3 times. There was one ground level shot from the seated floor camera person that really showed it. To quote whoever coined it about Leandro Barbosa on CL back in the day in a game ..... "whoa dude is like an alien he's so fast".

Props Old Man!!

 

Did you see the multiple missed layups?

 

i think this is fair and definitely some of the 3 ptrs are probably due to just holding the ball too long.
He should have finished the game in regulation: probably got fouled but I think the refs letting that go was not unreasonable

On the optimistic side, he does seem to be able to ramp up albiet far slower then he once did so not just ready to say this is what we're going to get for the playoffs

 

I saw the overall contribution to a game we had to win, EVEN though it was sub par for HIM with 37 points, not efficiently and not great defense at times, considering there's only so much energy to spread around when you're 38 years old and coming back from an injury.

 

haven't gotten a chance to watch this one, but yeah, there's not a context in which 10 threes from lebron makes sense. he's shooting them at a 30% clip. do we want AD taking ten threes? because about as many will go in.

 

The Jazz were also kinda leaving him open so he kinda HAD to take them...

And sometimes the 3's were coming late in the shot clock.

This is where having D-Lo really helps our team because he is another guy that can create offense out of thin air and we don't need to rely on LeBron as much. We were able to create secondary offense a few times when it went to Austin Reaves or Schroder...but just having one more guy like D-Lo I think woulda made a big diff and not resulted in 10 threes from Bron.

With that being said...is he playing tonight or nah?

 

I definitely don't want him taking 10 3s, a pod this morning did make a good point about it though -- think it was the Kam bros: this was a game they didn't see as a real threat (they started the game with a 10 day contract player guarding Bron) and he needs the reps to try to get that 3 ball back. It wasn't excusing it, rather an outside observation that does make some sense with the limited time we have left this season and the fact that we're not going to have a practice until the regular season ends.

 

Oh no no nah .... no way that's even remotely likely to have possibly happened.

 

Just retire already.

 

I wish LeBron had more of a mamba mentality

 

I wish…. Nevermind.
At least it’s still one of the best records ever recorded and played on a record player.

 

Second half Bron was the only reason this game wasn't a 30 point loss. He wasn't the problem. Looked like playoff Bron, including picking up Kawhi until the game was essentially over.

 

He looked gassed in the 1st half as should any 38 year old coming off a overtime game. We probably would have fared better without him.

 

clearly a bench player at this point in his career

***makes goat noises in the locker room***

SMH



JK, didn't watch this one, but disappointing result. For the guy who used to be the king of +/-, those all end up being empty stats when I look at them. 33/8/7 is impressive on 13/20 shooting. But to be a negative 10? You have to suck elsewhere.