Los Angeles Lakers coach Frank Vogel could have been concerned. The NBA All-Star break was looming, and his team had one more game to go. But Vogel said he could sense from his players, and from LeBron James in particular, that they were focused.
These were all reasonable questions. But with about two months remaining in the regular season now, the Lakers have shown that they are, in fact, for real — and lately they have done so while the entire organization mourns Kobe Bryant’s death. Not so fast. Now 35 years old and plowing through his 17th NBA season, James is back to playing some of the best basketball of his career. Pick an adjective, any adjective: efficient, polished, determined. A prolific user of Instagram, James has made a habit of punctuating his social media posts with a pair of hashtags — #WashedKing and #RevengeSeason — that allude to the unnamed critics who thought his game was in decline.
But James, one of just three remaining players from his draft class, is playing as if he still has much to prove.Speaking of Davis, remember his 2018-19 season? He asked the New Orleans Pelicans to trade him, a request they rebuffed when they turned down the Lakers’ heated overtures. The entire soap opera cast a shadow over both organizations for months. The Lakers’ fragile chemistry crumbled.
At the same, Davis has, for the most part, stayed healthy, and so has James, which is the key to everything. The Lakers cannot expect to win much of anything without either of them; they are the best duo in the league. Against the Nuggets on Wednesday, they combined for 65 points and 22 rebounds.None of which is meant to suggest that James and Davis can win games by themselves. The rest of the team has, too, exceeded expectations.
“Dwight came in,” James said, “and changed the game from an offensive-rebounding standpoint, just bullying whoever was on him, being able to get to the free throw, getting us into the bonus, getting us some dunks, giving us some extra possessions. And A.C. defensively was just so in tune, getting steals, getting stops, getting strips.
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