But when will it stop? While the basketball world marvels at the debut of Victor Wembanyama, LeBron James showed who was still the boss of the NBA this Wednesday evening. At 38 years old, the Los Angeles Lakers super star was monstrous during his team’s victory in the City of Angels derby against the Clippers (130-125 after overtime).
The “King” brought out his full range of basketball superstar: long shots, blocks, rebounds, powerful dunks and shoulder penetrations, often in decisive moments, to explode a room committed to the cause of the Lakers. With 35 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists, James largely contributed to his team’s third victory this season in five games.
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Author of a wild dunk after putting his shoe back on the other side of the court in the second quarter, LeBron created the decisive gap in overtime with a one-handed dunk on an alley-oop offered by Austin Reaves . ” What a game ! We know that it’s always a real fight with these guys, we were finally able to win one,” said the “King”, while the Lakers had not won the derby since 2020.
“Victory is the only thing that matters to me, I work physically every day, I prepare mentally every day to help my teammates, we were missing players tonight, it’s a big victory for us and I am happy to have contributed to it,” he added.
1 of 4, the night of the French
Trailing by 19 points during the match, the Lakers came back and offered a superb end to the match, with nine changes of lead in total in the game. Kawhi Leonard (38 points) and Paul George (35 points) were huge for the Clippers, but they had to bow down while waiting to be able to count on their new teammate James Harden, just transferred from Philadelphia but not yet ready to play .
In the other matches of the night, Rudy Gobert dominated Nikola Jokic to allow Minnesota to win against Denver and return to a balanced record (2-2). The French pivot was especially efficient in defense, with 12 rebounds and 2 blocks, for only 4 points. Still on the French side, Kilian Hayes, new starting point guard for the Detroit Pistons, was clumsy (zero out of six shooting) and scored no points in 25 minutes during a defeat against Portland (110-101). ).
Evan Fournier once again remained seated on the bench of the New York Knicks, while Bilal Coulibaly scored 5 points in 27 minutes with Washington (3 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 interceptions), beaten by Atlanta (130-121). Ousmane Dieng (11 minutes, 2 points, 2 rebounds) and Olivier Sarr (6 minutes, 0 points, 5 rebounds, 2 blocks) were able to benefit from a little playing time with Oklahoma City, defeated by New Orleans ( 110-106).
