| LeBron James is playing every game, trying to dominate every game and – it seems – passing some kind of fresh career milestone in virtually every game. Common logic suggests that having an all-time great player going on a personal tear just months removed from leading the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA title, thereby moving himself squarely to the forefront of the MVP discussion, would seem to bode particularly well for the team’s prospects of repeating. Yet, in the wake of Thursday night’s 109-98 defeat to the Brooklyn Nets, there are some issues and wrinkles to work out in Tinseltown and an increasing mood shift toward one prevailing thought. James, for all his excellence since the campaign began, needs either some rest or some help – and maybe both. “The Lakers are in a world of trouble right now,” three-time NBA All-Star Antoine Walker told First Things First on FS1. “If I am the Lakers, I am thinking about adding a piece. You are going to wear LeBron out in this situation if you don’t make some kind of move. This is a big situation. This is about more than four weeks.” The relevance of four weeks is it’s the minimum timeframe the Lakers are expected to be without Anthony Davis, who is sidelined with a calf strain and Achilles tendonitis. With Davis out, the expectation is that James will try to do even more to pick up the slack. While there were preseason suggestions head coach Frank Vogel may monitor James’ minutes, it hasn’t really worked out that way. The 36-year-old has played each of the team’s 30 games following an offseason of only 71 days, due to the twin effects of their run to the championship and the rescheduling necessitated by COVID-19. Over the past 10 games, he’s averaged 37.6 minutes per game, compared to 38.3 for his career. James was irked when he wasn’t named MVP last year, the voters instead opting for Giannis Antetokounmpo for the second straight time. His relentless efforts have made him the overwhelming favorite to win it this season (+140, per FOX Bet), but at what cost? Putting everything out there each night is commendable but is also causing some nervousness among Lakers fans, who are aware that the route to another title may be more complex this time around. The loss to the Nets must be kept in perspective, sure, but the matchup was billed as a potential NBA Finals preview and that might turn out to be the case. If that is the eventual outcome, hopefully it won’t look like this, with Kevin Durant missing for Brooklyn with a hamstring injury, and Davis plus Dennis Schroder (COVID protocols) absent from the Lakers lineup. In truth, it wasn’t much of a battle. The Nets getting hot early, the Lakers incapable of getting their 3-point shooting going, and a Brooklyn lead that ballooned to 25 points sucking the competitive life out of the evening. The NBA season is so long that individual games rarely have quite the weight they are hyped as, though James did get a chance to see first-hand how much of a threat the Nets, now with Kyrie Irving and James Harden working together alongside Durant, can pose. “You don’t look at too many games during the season where you have a measuring stick, but when you do, you want to be full,” James told reporters. “They weren’t full as well. You don’t know really how to go about that. But you can always find ways to get better.” The Nets were flat-out ridiculed in the early stages of Harden’s switch from Houston, with most of their issues centered around the team’s defensive limitations. No one is laughing now, as the Nets are 10-1 against teams above .500. By comparison, the Lakers are 4-7 against such rivals. “Newsflash for people,” FOX Sports NBA analyst Chris Broussard said. “The Nets are winning the East. It could be more, they could win this whole thing. They are unstoppable. They didn’t even have their best player (on Thursday), but they were unstoppable.” The worry for the Lakers is a situation where they fight their way out of the West, past teams like the regrouped Clippers, the swashbuckling Utah Jazz, or the fast-heating Portland Trail Blazers or Phoenix Suns, only to find an opponent they don’t match up well against. Davis had looked somewhat muted before the injury and this year’s Lakers team simply doesn’t seem to have the same swagger. There are options – Walker proposed a trade for Blake Griffin to bulk up the paint presence both during Davis’ absence and after his return – while Lakers management will already have both eyes firmly on how to best position the roster for the postseason. The other part of the discussion centers around how much value the Lakers get from James being out there every night. The short-term advantage is obvious. Yet with the home court playoff lift reduced by the restrictions of these times, the incentive to add in sporadic nights off must be growing. It is an option that has been resisted until now. And so, James keeps playing and keeps collecting numbers. The latest milestone on Thursday was in becoming only the third player in NBA history to reach 35,000 points, behind Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and yet having gotten to the mark quicker than either of those illustrious predecessors. There are more stat goals on the way, and at this rate by the time James is done, the list of accolades will be overwhelming. “I don’t get tired,” James said recently. “I don’t feel tired. I get my sleep. I get my rest.” Except, in basketball terms, he’s not getting a lot of it. He’s on a mission and his foot is on the gas. It’s powering him to a likely MVP award. Will it come at a greater price to the Lakers’ hopes of repeating? We might not find out until July. Here’s what others have said … Shannon Sharpe, Undisputed: “It’s hard to keep a team in the game when you’re -30 from the 3-point line. LeBron shot 60 percent from the floor, he gave you 32 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, but when you don’t have another guy that can generate offense, you don’t have another guy who can go get his shot like AD can, the Lakers losing to the Nets doesn’t surprise me. The Lakers were -15 when LeBron wasn’t in the game. It kind of reminded me of his last year in Cleveland.” Frank Vogel, Los Angeles Lakers head coach: “If he needs a blow, he’s going to get himself out or ask for a sub. We’re looking at those types of ways to within his minutes make sure he’s not carrying too much of a load.” Skip Bayless, Undisputed: “This was a golden opportunity for LeBron James, who is already the MVP frontrunner, to close the case if he keeps coming up bigger and bigger without AD by his side. Then, here comes the Nets without KD, who I believe is the best player on the planet. I believe that KD is better than AD, so I thought KD was a bigger loss to the Nets than AD was to LeBron. I fully expected LeBron to dominate this game, to take it over, and to help his Lakers pull away from a Nets team featuring only Kyrie and Harden.” |
