Los Angeles Lakers “Activates” in the second half, beat Houston

LeBron James will show his character and leadership in the next 24 games!

Take a look at this picture above…it is LeBron James taking a charge of James Harden that sealed the game for the Lakers. When was the last time anyone saw this?

I don’t know about this playoff activation thing that he was spouting out to the media, but he is really going to have to play hard to live up to these quotes about his engagement going forward…

"“My level of intensity has to be [high], unfortunately for me because I don’t like to do it at such an early time,” James said. “I’m a little bit different. “But it’s been activated. So look forward to see what we can do.” “Obviously, we would have loved to have success when I was out, but we didn’t so this is where we is right now. I’m going to be a little bit different a little bit earlier than I would like to be in previous years.”"

Lake Show Life post games took a lot of heat from LeBron fans for criticizing the lack of full effort from LeBron James at the beginning of the season.

Well, it does feel good to be vindicated.

These are really good quotes to put in the paper, but he was not living up the hype for the first half of this game. He looked frustrated and when TV announcers call you out for bad body language during the game, it’s not a good look.

Just watching LeBron James not step up while James Harden drove the lane for a layup, almost backing up.

Or taking himself out of the game when James Harden knocked down a 3-pointer!

The low point was LeBron James watching James Harden throw down a tomahawk dunk instead of rotating over.

For the first half, nothing had changed.

But he brought it in the second half.

LeBron James supported the Lakers cause scoring 29 points, grabbing 11 rebounds. He also dished out six assists, got a steal and a block. But was most important was the charge he drew at the end of the game to get Harden fouled out.

This dunk seemed to wake him and the crowd up and the Lakers rode the wave to the comeback win.

But this type of game should worry Lakers fans because LeBron’s conditioning could be a factor. The word around the campfire according to Brian Windhorst is LeBron James is working at 280 pounds.

"The word on the street is that LeBron is 280 right now."

LeBron James is listed at 250 pounds. Pfft! Bull! He hasn’t been 250 pounds since his Miami days and that was because he was on such a strict weight program he was at 275 pounds of solid muscle during his tenure. Those days of being 250 pounds have long been gone.

But when Windhorst was asked to verify on ESPN’s The Jump, he made the late great Michael Jackson proud with his moonwalk from the above quote saying LeBron is out of his normal routine.

If you watched to the end, Windhorst did have a pointed statement. If LeBron James is making statements that he is healed and “activated”, the injury excuse needs to stay in the closet for the rest of the season.

The Lakers can’t afford LeBron James to coast anymore, they need LeBron James to play 35 minutes on average hard.