LeBron James and the Lakers are set to face the Rockets tonight for Game 2 of their first-round playoff series. Just hours before the game, ESPN’s insider for the Lakers, Dave McMenamin, appeared on NBA Today with Mallika Andrews and Shams Charania.
They discussed how the 41-year-old veteran and the rest of the roster responded to losing their star players, Luka Doncic (Grade 2 hamstring strain) and Austin Reaves (Grade 2 oblique strain), to injury near the end of the regular season.
“Let me take you back to the last week of the regular season. The Lakers had lost their first two games after the injuries to Austin and Luka, and they’re up in San Francisco for a team meeting,” said McMenamin.
“Several team sources told me that LeBron from that moment on kind of shifted back into the leader role and the primary role and basically his tone, focus and attention to detail, from that point through the end of the regular season, through the week of preparation during the play-in tournament, and then through Game 1 was that of ‘follow me, and if you take care of your job and I take care of my job then we’re going to have a chance to win.'”
“It doesn’t mean that their winning Game 1 is going to automatically get them to the second round, but if they stay in this mode, and LeBron James is certainly going to set the example of how to stay in this mode, they feel like they have a game plan that can get them further along in the playoffs.”
“And then just as Shams alluded to, maybe you get Austin back late in the first round, and maybe you get Luka back in the second round of the playoffs,” McMenamin concluded.
LeBron James began the playoffs with high intensity and led the Lakers to a Game 1 win over the Rockets. He contributed with 19 points, 13 assists, and eight rebounds while shooting 9-15 from the field (60.0 FG%) and 1-2 from beyond the three-point line (50.0 3P%).
Historically, a LeBron James-led team has never lost a playoff series after winning Game 1. The other players on the roster would certainly be more confident since they knew the pecking order in the locker room and had faith in who was leading them on the floor.
But can a 41-year-old replicate his prime dominance to lead the Lakers from the front? If the Rockets do not get Kevin Durant back for Game 2, then certainly he can.
However, if the Rockets get Durant back, the Lakers will have a tough task ahead of them. Especially since they do not expect Luka Doncic to return at all in the first-round series, while Austin Reaves only has a small chance of returning late in the first round if they manage to push it to Game 6 or 7.
If a 41-year-old LeBron James manages to beat the Rockets even with Kevin Durant, it would cement him as the greatest of all time, in my opinion. There is a reason why almost all basketball fans have their eye on this marquee series right now.
