Los Angeles Lakers: 4 Lessons from the loss to Milwaukee Bucks
By Ronald Agers
LeBron James broke some more records. But does it matter?
Let’s get the stats out-of-the-way. LeBron James collected his seventh triple-double of the season with 21 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists. With the 37 minutes he played, he passed Kobe Bryant for third place on the all-time minutes played list (regular season and playoffs combined). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone are the only ones left above him.
He also passed Gary Payton to move up to ninth on the all time assists career list. Rajon Rondo spoke about it via ESPN.
"“He’s breaking all type of records,” Lakers guard Rajon Rondo said. “Seems like every other game it’s a new thing he’s doing. It’s not like the same [records]. It’s not just all points. There’s so many things he’s able to do throughout the entire game of basketball."
It’s really interesting, maybe even nice that Rondo had those nice words. Especially when he teamed up with LeBron to turn the ball over at a ridiculous rate. It was rumored that James was suffering from a cold. Maybe that could be attributed to shooting just 8-for-19 from the field. But turning the ball over four times is starting to be a trend. No check that, that’s his average.
There’s no reason Wesley Matthews should be making a contribution in this game. The defensive closeouts were bad all around but LeBron was bad too.
https://twitter.com/NBA/status/1207843458653798400
Allowing him to beat you backdoor is unacceptable. If this wasn’t happening, LeBron allowed slippage in transition defense where Giannis was feasting.
Last year, LeBron James was collecting empty stats while the Lakers season was imploding. This year he was playing both ends with energy that help spark this amazing start. Now it seems like he’s starting to coast again. Is he getting tired? We’ll see. Many are already starting to wonder.