LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

If the Lakers beat the Rockets with LeBron and no Reaves/Luka, Reaves/Luka become healthy and they beat OKC, Lakers beat Den/Spurs and advance to the Finals, and Lakers win the title against the C Bags, the GOAT discussion is over and LeBron would be a top 5 Lakers of all time!

 

guessing they're going to try to make him a scorer and try to make him do it as a ballhandler and not from the post. houston wants to see lebron take pull up threes, and he did almost nothing of the sort in game 1. will be interesting to see how houston tries to force it and how jj prepares for this.

if i were them i'd ratchet up the ball pressure on kennard and help off ayton to prevent entry passes to lebron anywhere elbow or below. feel like they didn't do much of this, but maybe i'm misremembering.

 

Smart was more on ball, Luke was more off ball. If they try to prevent Bron from getting in his Stockton bag, maybe that on ball usage ticks up for Luke and Thompson can exploit it that way. But Houston has a weird sized team. Lots of bigger wings, few bigs and no guards that Udoka is willing to recognize. So their only guy who can pressure a guard like that is Thompson.

They also don't have the reps or experience to get the better of Bron. He's seen everything thrown at him by better. They have to really front and be flying around the passing lanes at all times for Bron still not to look for his guys and go into scoring mode the point it's a detriment to the team.

 

I agree with both of you that Houston will or should try this, but don't think it will work. Mainly due to what you said here.

If they make LeBron a scorer, he can get 30+, and at some point they're going to give in and try to limit him more, and then LeBron will be able to dish it off for others to score. The only way they don't give in is if our defense sucks and they are able to score easily, and they have a decent sized lead even with LeBron scoring a ton. But in that case, it would be due to our poor defense and not them making LeBron a scorer imo. I guess we'll see. I think that how we do in Game 2 will be more predicated on our defense, limiting Durant's touches and shots, and if Ayton is able to limit Sengun even when Durant is out there.

 

they have okogie, who udoka will use. i just think they'd rather roll the dice by forcing lebron to use the dribble to beat guys than what they did in game 1, which was let him get post touches and triple threat catches below the arc. after his second post up, i was really confused as to what udoka thought would happen. like, tari eason can't defend lebron in the post. nobody on houston can. so the solution is to make it impossible for us to get offense initiated unless lebron is the one doing it. maybe there's no way to make that happen, but i've seen jj use lebron this way (and i hated it) even when we had better options.

 

I'm fine if they want to try that for 20 minutes, it's one additional guy we can completely ignore on the other end. He's shot well this year, although it abandoned him in April. But he does not shoot with any sense of volume. Thompson can't shoot, Okogie not a shooter, Eason is having a brutal slump, Tate isn't a shooter and DFS might be dead i haven't seen him.

Can KD (when he gets back), Sheppard and streaky Smith cobbled together with some blend of those forwards make enough 3s?

Also with Okogie, he's small. He's big for his size but his size is 6-4.

 

Bron looked really comfortable out there. I think he will continue to manipulate Houston's defense.

I think he is absolutely locked in to win this series. It will be a huge milestone on his career in terms of narrative, leading a depleted Lakers team to a playoff series win. And that's scary for Houston, this guy is just so clever, it's unbelievable. For me it was always his biggest strength and one that is really impactful at this time