LeBron James and the Lakers: A Team in Crisis

Things are going badly for the Lakers. At least, but what they should: the 3-4 start, losing every time they have played away from home, is a poor balance that no one wanted and that can be a burden that accumulates throughout the season. Without being the 2-10 with which they started last year, achieving a better balance and a better classification than then (43-39, seventh in the Western Conference) were two things necessary to achieve a clearer position for the playoffs, but also so that the final stretch of the regular season could be faced without the urgent need for a comeback from last year and with great physical demands for a squad for which it is imperative to reach the final phase healthy (and relatively fresh). One that, at the moment, seems distant… but on which we must start working from the first stages of the competition.

And that’s where the figure of LeBron James comes in. The star, an active NBA legend, Top Scorer in the history of the best League in the world and an intrinsic part of that always short line of titans that appear in the Olympus of basketball, is playing a lot. Too much. Too much for a player who will turn 39 on December 30, who is immersed in the 21st season of his career, who has 1,428 regular season games and 282 playoff games behind him, and who has averaged 38.1 minutes per night and 41.3 respectively. That he has broken all records, he takes his body to an athletic perfection never seen before, he has taken on a lot of ball throughout his career and he has been exposed to the wear and tear of being on the lips of public opinion every day. All of that is in the bag that LeBron drags as if he didn’t weigh anything, an amount of physical and mental erosion that doesn’t arrive. And he better not explode, because of what he might go through.

At the moment, it is a possibility that this will happen. Because, it seems incredible, these Lakers are as dependent on LeBron as the Cavaliers and the Heat were in the past. The star, who was going to average about 28-30 minutes per game, is at almost 36, a figure that since his arrival to the Lakers was only surpassed in 2021-22 (37.2). He has had physical problems in recent years and with the Los Angeles entity he has never reached 70 games played, coronavirus also through. And in the last two years he has stayed at 56 and 55, in addition to playing as an infiltrator in the last playoffs. A bad omen, no matter how much James takes great care of himself and does at his age and in his active seasons what no one has done in the history of basketball and almost any sport.

More. LeBron averages 25.3 points, 8.4 rebounds and 5.9 assists, in addition to 1.6 steals and 1.1 blocks. That is to say, he continues to play a lot of ball, and the dependence that his teammates have on him when there are problems or the attack gets stuck is brutal. A risk that makes him accumulate even more fatigue than he already suffers from the minutes he is on the court, also motivated by the two overtimes that the Lakers have already had to play, one against the Kings (with a loss, 132- 127) and another against the Clippers (victory, 130-125). It is difficult to see the player on the court so much time, but the Lakers’ three victories have been close (5, 3 and 5 points difference), which forces them to keep him on the court longer than necessary. That, and everything falls apart when he goes to rest, something for which Darvin Ham, with many problems in the rotation at the beginning (it is still difficult to draw concrete conclusions regarding this man), cannot find a solution. In the 7 games of the season, there is a +53 with LeBron… and a -77 when he sits on the bench. Desolate.

And more. The Lakers have very important rotation men like Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent and Rui Hachimura in dry dock due to injury, Taurean Prince has already had to miss a game and Anthony Davis has had the first scare of the season, the first of the many that he will have (it has always been like this) and that does not seem very serious (a blow to the hip), but that prevented him from playing the second half against the Heat, which forced more minutes for LeBron in another even finish (108-107 for the Heat, who reigned in madness) in which it lasted more than 37 minutes, including the entire last quarter (13 points with 6 of 8 shooting in that stretch). That is to say, the Lakers’ situation is not the best and it also allows the minutes of the omnipresent star to skyrocket, forcing him to play more than he would have with all the healthy pieces.

It’s not good news for the Lakers. The defeats have a point of logic: they have been against high-level teams (Nuggets, Kings, the emerging Magic and Heat), always away from home (they have to resolve this as soon as possible) and with many casualties. And in the victories, especially the one achieved against the Clippers, there have been glimpses that invite a certain hope, optimism. But LeBron’s body is more vulnerable than ever and it has become essential that the squad learns to play without his permanent presence and takes advantage of him when he is on the bench so that he can calmly take advantage of his breaks. . That, or we will be forced to see that decline that never comes at the worst time, either with a serious injury that he has never suffered or, simply, being a victim of the most logical exhaustion. This is what, sooner or later, the Lakers will have to assume, an undeniable fact that responds to the inexorable passage of time: that LeBron James is human. No matter how much he tries to prove the opposite. And he almost always succeeds.

Follow the Diario AS channel on WhatsApp, where you will find all the sports keys of the day.

2023-11-07 16:58:48
#Lakers #problem #dependence #LeBron