LeBron James does it again, he puts his team on his back and simply refuses to lose to his old team the Cleveland Cavaliers. I am actually shocked that the Cavs played as well as they did against the Lakers considering how terrible the Eastern NBA Division is. Without LeBron this Laker team does not make the playoffs. With that being said the Cavaliers are a better team than I expected, so maybe I will take it easy on the East for a while. The Cavs outrebounded the Lakers, shot 46% from the field and 43% from the 3-Point Line and still lost by seven, 108-115.
LeBron James played 38 minutes and shot the ball 37 times. LBJ finished the game with 46 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. He was the only Laker player to score over 20 points. Anthony Davis scored 17 points in 36 minutes, AD had a bad game. He shot the ball 19 times and only made five shots, but he did grab ten rebounds and passed well with four assists.
The Laker guards played absolutely terrible last night. Dennis Schroder, Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Wesley Matthews combined shot the ball 49 times and their total points combined was 27. The horrible shooting by the Laker guards is why this game was even close. Why did the Laker guards shoot so poorly? You have to give credit to Andre Drummond and the Cleveland Cavaliers they played sound team defense last night.
LeBron has to hype himself up to play at an MVP level every night, he has to find something to get under his skin, I guess to help motivate him. Well, according to USA Today, LeBron James got his feelings hurt when he saw a Cavaliers front office member cheer when he missed a shot. Are you kidding me? If I was a Cleveland front office member I would be burning a jersey at half court. We all have to remember we are still in the COVID pandemic era and there are no fans in the stands. If anyone yells anything, everyone will hear it. If the team manager farts by the Gatorade jug it will echo throughout the empty arena and the TV mics will pick it up. The league has been blaring fake crowd noise like a sitcom crowd to give the illusion of excitement. To a die-hard basketball fanatic like me, I will always love to watch the NBA, but to the casual sports fan the empty arenas makes the games so boring. The canned recorded crowd cheers really are an illusion of excitement for the players, especially for LeBron James who has to get pumped up when an elderly person cheers for the Cavs. No one cares. It’s really hard to care about the NBA right now, with the Super Bowl coming up between the Bucs and the Chiefs. Brady is really in a league of his own, but how can you bet against the Chiefs, who are the defending champions?
Go Lakers.
