LeBron James is averaging 6.0 drives per game in the half court these playoffs. The exact same amount of drives as Klay Thompson
Less drives/g than D’Angelo Russell, Marcus Smart, Tobias Harris, Chris Paul, Cam Johnson, Austin Reaves, Caris LeVert, etc
Age/injury are showing… pic.twitter.com/wl1Xd5eIeq
— NBA University (@NBA_University) May 5, 2023
LeBron is a jump shooter
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May 19, 2023 3 Comments
https://twitter.com/NBA_University/status/1654501625040338955?s=19
The bigger problem is LeBron is not finishing anywhere near as many of the drives that he takes. What’s scary is it reminds me of what happens when you get older and get going too fast and stumble and are out of control as you try not to fall. Bron looked like that on a lot of the drives in the first two games.
Is it the foot injury or Father Time or probably a combination of those plus fatigue at how long the Lakers have been playing must win games. Everything is catching up on them right now. We’ll find out tonight just how much LeBron and AD and the Lakers have left in the tank.
You have to give credit to the Nuggets. They’re the best version of them we’ve seen and Jokic’s Game 1 and Murray’s Game 2 were legitimate superstar game winning performances. They outplayed LeBron and AD. The shot insanely good, almost too good to repeat.
For that to happen though, the Lakers will need to play much better and their two superstars will have to play up to their reps and not get outplayed by their Nugget counterparts. AD needs to dominate the paint. Bron needs to dominate the paint. Let Reaves, Hachimura, and Walker fire away from outside and get into position to dominate the glass. Let the shooters shoot and the bigs bang.
I would start Vando over Russell so we have our best defensive alignment for both Jokic and Murray. They’ve shown we need to shut down both of them if we want to win this series. That has to start tonight. I still have Lakers in six with a backdoor sweep.
Its also the terrible quality of many of those shots, often within thebfirst few seconds after passing mid-court, before theres rebounders, without running anything. Thise gotta stop.