Los Angeles Lakers: 4 lessons from statement win over Bucks
By Ronald Agers
The Los Angeles Lakers welcomed back the LeBron James everybody knows and loves!
One of the great things about Lake Show Life is the comment section below the articles. It’s amazing how casual NBA fans get exposed. Nothing showed that more than in our Editor Jason Reed’s article basically predicting that LeBron James would have a strong bounce-back game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
This comment from an unnamed commenter was classic…
"Why is Lebron suddenly going to turn things up? At the moment, the young guys are carrying the weight, Lebron and Davis have the lowest minutes of their career and the team is playing with lowered energy and still the #1 team in basketball. Why change? This writer needs to spend more time actually following the day-to-day of the team."
Oops?!!!
After LeBron James played a subpar game in the Lakers clunker against the Golden State Warriors when they blew a 14 point fourth-quarter lead and as much as 19 overall, the staff knew that LeBron was going to send a message. Why?
- Superstars try to never play two bad games in a row.
- LeBron James always has certain games circled on the calendar. Those games are usually nationally televised games when the Lakers play the NBA stars (I guess Giannis Antetokounmpo applies in this case!) or hyped-up young players marketed to be his “replacement”.
- He’s still irritated that he lost the MVP race to the Greek Freak in a landslide last year.
Basically, another prediction that was spot on by Lake Show Life. LeBron James lost his focus and aggressiveness only finished with 19 points on 6-16 shooting against the Warriors.
He had already matched those numbers by halftime in this one.
Overall LeBron finished the game with 34 points (13-25 shooting!), 6 rebounds and 8 assists. The biggest story was LeBron firing up six shots from the land of the extra point in ten tries.
https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1352431401165934593
The evolution of LeBron’s jump-shot is been an interesting journey. Back in the 2011 NBA Finals, the blueprint for stopping LeBron was defending the drive based on the narrative that he’s not an elite shooter. The old blueprint was as follows.
- Dive under the screens to prepare for the attack to the basket. That especially the plan to force him to drive left.
- Based on the lineup on the floor with LeBron (Number of capable shooters!), sag off the ball and use LeBron’s willingness to pass against him forcing the supporting player to hit shots.
- The point? LeBron James may miss 3 point shots, but he won’t miss dunks.
As for now, this scheme is not working anymore. Through the first 16 games, James is now shooting 39.6% from distance.
Assuming LeBron James stays at this level, now the rest of the NBA has a real problem. If his shooting holds up, not only will he be able to hold off Father Time, but the wear and tear on his body drop significantly.
The Bucks for some reason refused to send help in crunch time and left James playing one on one against Jrue Holiday. By the time an adjustment was made, he had already smoked them for 12 points in the fourth quarter.
Sure LeBron James was hot from the 3 point line, but there was another player that even Bucks head coach, Mike Budenholzer said was doing even more damage during the TNT broadcast. Read on to see who that player was.