The Los Angeles Lakers are on a mission and LeBron James continued his role as the greatest athlete in recorded history last night in Game 1 of the 2020 NBA Covid Finals falling one assist shy of another triple -double. LBJ finished the game with 25 pts, 13 rebs, 9 assists. The Lakers as a team shot 39% from the 3-point line with the two biggest three’s of the game coming in the first quarter by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, which helped the Lakers come back from 13 points down to finish the first quarter up by three.
The Lakers never looked back.
Even though the Lakers shot better than average from beyond the 3- point line, LeBron and company already had a game plan to pound the ball into the paint, to bully and dominate the Miami Leprechauns. The Lakers crashed the boards with Dwight Howard and Anthony Davis out on the court helping the Lakers to outrebound Miami 36 -54. After the big men of the Lakers got pushed around a little bit  by the Denver Nuggets in the WCF, Miami was not prepared to handle the physicality of Lakers. It took all season and the playoffs to develop, but finally the big men of the Lakers are playing like true, traditional centers, (kinda,) in the Finals.
If Davis is going to continue to shoot three’s at least crash the boards for a rebound. Thank goodness the Lakers have ”Basketball Moses” on their team in LeBron James. He parted the Miami Heat with spin moves and deceptive dribbles and a few slight elbows and stiff arms to easily cut through the Miami defense to score and to rebound all game. LeBron at times looked like he was Jim Brown, the football running back, juking his way to the rim and in the process beating up the entire Miami Heat team. As a basketball fan I want to see a good Final series, it was sad to see Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic get hurt for the Heat, but as a Lakers fan I am so happy that the Lakers are playing their best team basketball in the NBA Finals and Miami cannot hang or match the physical play of the Lakers.
 If the Lakers keep pounding the ball inside they are going to simply sweep Miami, the Heat have no answer, no solution to stop Howard and Davis in the paint and LeBron up top.  Not only are the Lakers out rebounding the Heat but they are also passing more sharply, led obviously by LeBron, the Lakers had three  more assists than  the Heat. However, the best assist of the game in my opinion shockingly came from Dwight Howard, he caught the ball at the free throw line extended and faked like he was going to drive into the paint and did his best impersonation of Magic Johnson with a no look shovel pass to Anthony Davis for an easy two points.
How can anyone consistently stop that?
There was a drastic difference in the aggressiveness that the Lakers showed in the first game of the Finals compared to their aggressiveness in the WCF. Maybe the Lakers finally realized what Laker Nation has known all season, that they are bigger than everybody and its time to start playing like it. No team can match up to the Lakers on paper, and finally it appears the Lakers have had a mental shift; they are turning that corner to actually play to their full potential. Unless, Miami can shoot their way to victory, I can easily see the Lakers’ sweeping the Heat. The Lakers cannot let up, they have to keep their foot on the gas, be aggressive, pound the ball into the paint, kick it out for open threes, play championship winning defense, and win this for Kobe and Gigi.
Let’s Go Lakers!
