The Los Angeles Lakers are living a tumultuous 2021/22 NBA season, struggling with injuries, health and safety protocols, and lack of chemistry between their players. They’re taking the most advantage of any little success they have this campaign and LeBron James surpassing Kobe Bryant on the all-time Christmas Day scoring list recently made more noise than the Lakers losing their matchup.
The Brooklyn Nets were too much for the Lakers, winning an entertaining match at Crypto.com Arena without Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. James Harden took care of business and led his squad to the win, shocking LeBron and co. at home.
Zach Lowe recently criticized people for paying more attention to LeBron breaking Kobe’s record than the final result of the game. For the ESPN reporter, the Nets winning with only one player of their Big 3 was bad and whatever record LeBron broke couldn’t make up for that.
“I really enjoyed how the headline after Christmas was ‘LeBron overtakes Kobe as all-time leading scorer on Christmas.’ As if anyone cares who the all-time leading scorer on Christmas is. And they lost the game. You lost at home to the Nets. The Nets had one of their 3 guys and you still lost. But LeBron passed Kobe as the all-time leading scorer on Christmas so all was well.”
LeBron finished that game on a high note, dropping 39 points on the Nets, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the 122-115 loss to the New Yorkers. James Harden recorded 36 points to go along with 10 rebounds and 10 assists, doing everything to take the Nets to the promised land.
The Lakers are a hot mess right now and blowing big opportunities against these dangerous rivals only hurt their chances to make the playoffs. While the Nets have managed to steal the No. 1 seed in the East despite playing without Kyrie Irving during the first two months of competition, the Lakers are wandering around, trying to find what’s wrong with them.
LeBron is still playing great, but individual performances don’t deserve celebrations when the team isn’t working as desired.
