LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

I think LeBron was tired of losing to the clips...lol

 

How many separate moments in that game did LeBron at 6'9" 250lbs do something spectacular with elevation or burst of speed and timing/coordination on defense for a blocked shot ..... that .... considering that mass and size he plays with and YES (c'mon! ) his age at 39 .... that we can't concede he's still athletic? .... just has to pick his spots of course at that age with all the miles on him. Mass and size has to figure in the equation. If can't say "athletic" then what ..... he's "average" physically for that size in the NBA?

 

Not bad for a senior citizen

 

Need to keep his minutes down man: it's too bad the West is such a murderer's row of talent.
Looks like he will be able to will the team like superstars to win a a few games in a playoff series by carrying the team. You add another few monster games for AD and that will get you to the 4 win marker.

But to give him the chance have to keep his minutes low not just for the fatigue to prevent one of those injuries again.

 

Yeah, minutes are too high. Which is funny since the team is trying to monitor his minutes this year. Given the choice, i'd rather him play higher minutes now than on the back half of the season that way he can pace his playoff ramp up and not run out of gas. My hope is this chemistry thing starts trending upwards, we get our injured guys back soon, DLO and AR keep trending in the right direction and after that we are able to consistently drop his minutes to 30...32.

 

I'm not worried about the minutes because although he's playing a lot, his usage I believe is down versus last year where he appeared gassed in the 4th quarters of close games.

He's not having to handle the ball on every possession, and with Wood/AD in there, he doesn't have to do as much on defense or rebounding either.

We're also seeing LeBron play a bit more off-ball this year compared to last year.

Not all minutes are created equal...I think LeBron is pacing himself in game as well, especially on defense. Ya'll see what Kawhi did to LeBron in that 1st quarter? Brutal.

Also - like others have said, literally all of our forwards were out (Prince/Rui/Vando), which won't always be the case. And we were playing against PG/Kawhi. I think this is one of those games where playing LeBron big minutes made sense. I think if I'm the Lakers, I try to limit LeBron this saturday if we get some of our guys back. But I also think after what happened last year starting 2-10, Ham is trying to come out the gates with a nice record after end of this month.

 

We just fall off of a cliff as soon as Lebron sits.

 

Pretty damn sad. I thought, that we'll finally be able to give this guy some rest... but he has to play 40mins a game for us to even have a chance. Pathetic tbh, i know we have some injuries but still.

 

Plus 12 in the 35 minutes LeBron played tonight. In the 13 minutes he didn’t they were outscored by 31 points. Brutal.

Obviously, every backup for him is injured but I think it's more than that. Dennis, was the only guard who could apply rim pressure other than Lebron. We miss his presence greatly imo. Just a total lack of dribble penetration from our other guards.

 

yeah, my first thought is of course we're doomed when he's out, he's our only forward. but then i'm like...the guys we bring back don't do lebron things, so it doesn't matter.

i'm just annoyed we're bad on defense again. i was hoping we'd get back to being a top defensive team, but no.

 

Story of the off-season is losing Dennis killed the non Lebron minutes and his POA defense is sorely missed.

He was an iron man in terms of injuries as well

 

It's not even a surprise we're bad on D. I knew we'd have to out score teams at least until Vando gets back. Dlo, Reaves, and Lebron are cones out there. AD can't cover for all of them.

 

The Magic bigs killed us in that game.

 

We got out hustled by every Magic guard as well

 

D'Angelo, Cam and Max shot a combined 8-29 from the field, and 1-13 from 3. That was a key factor in that loss too.

 

Crap penetration. Crap 3 point shooting. Crap defense.

WCF here we come (Via play in tournament)

 

Dude is far, FAR away from being our biggest problem...