Los Angeles Lakers: 3 Takeaways from win against Pacers

Indiana Pacers just can’t stop LeBron James!

It was no shock to anyone that LeBron James was going to come out aggressive and set the tone after basically playing the worst game of the season against the Denver Nuggets.  In that game  he scored 14 points on an anemic 5-15 shooting. After going scoreless in the second half of the previous game…

Los Angeles Lakers lose twice, the game and Lonzo Ball

Boy, the Los Angeles Lakers stunk on this one! They go to Denver and roll over 117-85. The Los Angeles Lakers rolled over but so did Lonzo Ball's ankle!

LeBron James scored 38 points, grabbed 9 rebounds and dished out 7 assists. This game was controlled by James and he showed his dominance in all aspects and carried the Lakers in crunch time.

A lot of things have been discussed this week about LeBron James reverting back to the habits of dominating the ball. Brian Windhorst’s article caused quite a stir around the NBA about LeBron’s point guard tendencies. Something that LeBron James admits has been a challenge for him…

"“That’s the challenge of things I’ve been kind of battling with since the season started,” James said after scoring 38 points in 38 minutes against Indiana, adding 9 rebounds and 7 assists. “How much do I defer and allow some of our young guys to kind of try to figure it out, and how much do I try to take over games? I think tonight was one of those instances where they looked at me and they wanted me to close the game.”"

The game had its ebbs and flows, but the Lakers need to consistently push the pace to be successful going forward this season.

But you could see flashes in this game of that all important pace that the Lakers brass wants to see out of this roster.

https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1068351643794661376

In this play here, you see LeBron James grabbing the rebound and immediately looking up the floor and without a dribble hits JaVale McGee with a pass in stride for the slam dunk! What makes this situation so important here is there is no dribbling the ball up allowing the Pacers to set their defense. A strong pass is faster than your quickest defender.

Here’s another example of where the Lakers are at their best and LeBron is asked to make plays…

https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1068363436940156929

Again, LeBron grabs the rebound and takes off running on the fast break. Kyle Kuzma is running his lane hard on the right side of the court. LeBron James hits him with the bounce pass and another early slam dunk.

Here’s LeBron James playing off the ball and using his basketball I.Q.

https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1068375317318840320

LeBron James is at the top of the key and hands the ball off to Tyson Chandler at the top of the key. LeBron’s man, Cory Joseph, falls asleep and James cuts to the basket for an easy lay up!

Then with the Lakers up four with about seven minutes left in the game, he did what superstars are supposed to do. He dropped 12 points in the final moments to get the Lakers lead back to double digits and out of reach for Indiana.

With the 30 point game, LeBron James made history (like…again!) passing the “Mailman” Karl Malone for third place on the all time 30 point game list. Dude has a lot of ink in the NBA history books. The accomplishments keep piling up!