LEBRON JAMES and the Los Angeles Lakers just could not be stopped. After absorbing a 100-93 opening day loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Lakers turned into an unappeased bunch of avengers to sweep the succeeding three games in the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) West first-round playoffs.
The last one—a 135-115 rout yesterday—saw James dish off his patented power-game, returning to his routine double-double habit in collecting 30 points and 10 assists to go with six rebounds in Florida’s Walt Disney complex.
James now has 101 points in four games despite that 10 in Game Two done more out of choice than anything as he urged his teammates in producing more, leading to a 111-88 blasting of the Blazers.
That series-tying win alone signaled the Lakers’ ominous fiery comeback from that opening-day stinker, where LeBron’s mindset, seemingly, was to set a new career record at the expense of a Laker victory.
He had accomplished it, all right, piling up 23 points, 17 rebounds and 16 assists to become the first to make 20+points-15+rebounds-15+assists in NBA history.
Now, if you say LeBron must have programmed the Western Conference playoffs as something to experiment on extracurricular of his own, I give it to you.
Better to try to achieve some goals while the journey is just barely starting?
He figured there’s plenty of time to recover anyway in case his ploy backfires?
Well, give that to superstars. They have agendas that sometimes go against the team’s overall goal. They are practically licensed to be licentious—at times.
And so, can Coach Frank Vogel blame LeBron, or even accost him for straying from the main aim, as in persevering to win every game in a series?
He’d rather not. He knows the rules. Superstars are given extra latitudes.
Wasn’t Phil Jackson like that in his dealings with Michael Jordan and, later, with the late Kobe Bryant, too?
When you have players that can coach themselves when on the floor, you are blessed. Jackson knew that. And, by now, Vogel knows that, too.
When LeBron powered the Lakers to a 116-108, Game Three victory on Sunday for the go-ahead, 2-1 series lead, his game-high 38 points was from 11-of-18 field goal shooting, 4-of-8 triple clip and 12-of-17 from the line.
In Tuesday’s Game Four win, LeBron fired a couple of three-pointers to quickly lift the Lakers to a 15-0 start, continuing to fire at will in teaming up again with Anthony Davis in building a commanding 43-25 lead in just one quarter.
With Damian Lillard shackled again—he finished with just 11 points—the Lakers dropped bombs in bunches until the Blazers quit trailing altogether after being left behind, 80-51, at halftime.
The win left the Lakers waving a 3-1 lead like Utah over Denmark in the West playoffs, with Houston and Oklahoma tied at 2-2 like the Los Angeles Clippers and the Dallas Mavericks.
Luka Donkic gave Dallas, down 133-132, the lift of its life when he drained a buzzer-beating three for the Mavericks’ series-tying 135-133 victory in Game Four.
The East became a blank landscape as Boston swept Philadelphia 4-0 like Toronto over Brooklyn (4-0) and Miami over Indiana (4-0).
The 3-1 Milwaukee Bucks will try to finish off the Orlando Magic at 6 a.m. on Thursday before the Lakers also try to wrap it up against the Blazers at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
Thanks to the NBA as it somehow helps us forget the vicious virus—even temporarily.
THAT’S IT The NBA playoffs cost Coach Brett Brown his job as he got fired after his Sixers got blanked by the 4-0 Celtics in their East series—even as Brown, the seven-season Coach Brown brought Philadelphia to the playoffs three straight years. The cruelty of coaching.