After missing the game against the Lone Rangers in the NBA regular season on March 30, the Lakers officially announced that LeBron James would still not play in the away game against the Jazz on April 1, Beijing time. In this way, for the Lakers who have fallen out of the Western Playoffs after losing to the Lone Rangers, they have fallen out of the Western Playoffs circle, and fans are not only worried about the future of Old Zhan, but also worried about the prospects of the "Purple and Gold Army".
The team is faltering, and may be able to win the title of regular season scoring king and bring 37-year-old Zhan a personal honor and some comfort, but the Lakers only have 7 games left in the regular season, and James still needs to play at least three games to meet the judging criteria, his ankle sprain has not healed, and he does not know when he will be able to return. Domestic and foreign difficulties, the Lakers are bitter, james is also bitter.
On March 31, Beijing time, in response to James's current situation and the Lakers' plight, several MLB experts and authoritative reporters gave their own views and analysis, with insider information, objective attitudes and opinions, and the overall view is not optimistic: James has gone downhill and cannot see the future of the Lakers.
At the age of 37, James has reached the peak of his career, which is an undeniable fact and a natural law, although he, like Cristiano Ronaldo on the football field, is a model of self-discipline and old strength in competitive sports, but being praised and cruel reality are two different things. This season's constant injuries, years of high-intensity hard work on the professional field, even the Iron Man will be injured, will feel inadequate. Although James can play a key role in the game he plays and is still not inferior to the young man, he has also missed many games, constantly appeared in various physical conditions, and is no longer a young man who is alive and well in the league as soon as he appears as a champion.
Although the Lakers only temporarily announced that James would not play against the Jazz, and did not disclose whether the old Jan would appear in the next game, the famous American medical expert Ivan Jeffries directly said on social media that he had made an in-depth interpretation of James's injury, and from a medical point of view, James may not come back this season, because his real injury is a second-degree sprain, and the most important thing to do is to rest for a few weeks.
If that's the case, it's a huge loss for James and for the Lakers. LeBron has now played 55 games and missed a full 20 games, and is now at the top of the league's player scoring list with an average of 30.1 points per game. The 37-year-old veteran, such a high score is indeed not easy, but it is in exchange for non-stop truces and non-stop comebacks, if you play 70 games, it will not be this result. In any case, as long as you play three more games, you can meet the minimum participation standards of the award of the king of scoring, and I believe that James will not easily give up the opportunity to seize this honor. However, according to Jeffries, old Zhan is already the "end of the crossbow", hard to hold on to the last 7 games 3 times, may be able to get the scoring king as desired, but for his personal physical damage is extremely great, may not be able to lead the Lakers into the playoffs.
The famous NBA reporter Brian Wenhorst bluntly believed in a talk show that LeBron James, even if he performed well personally, should bear some responsibility for the Lakers' poor performance this season. "LeBron's career was a four-year cycle, and now it's coming to the end of another four-year cycle in James's career," Winhorst said. He left his team exhausted, which I call organizational fatigue. That happened before the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Miami Heat, then the Cavaliers, and now the Los Angeles Lakers. At the end of each time, there were only a bunch of old guys left. We've witnessed the oldest team we've ever seen in NBA history, they don't have draft picks, they're exhausted. And the team James went to, it was like this every time. ”
The expert's implication is that some of the Chinese fans who do not like James have the attitude, which is to imply that the glory created by Lao Zhan in each team was achieved in the early days of his visit, the stars were piled up, the early record was brilliant, but as those well-known stars gradually faded out, the team did not have the right to choose rookies, and then began to fall, and then the results declined, and Lao Zhan left.
Winhorst believes the Lakers have ditched countless talented young players in recent years to build a veteran team around James. While the Anthony Davis deal brought early dividends to the Lakers in 2020, a championship trophy, the future will be dark as the Lakers have the most aging lineup in the league. James is 37 years old, Cameron Anthony is more than half a year old than the elder James, Westbrook is 34 years old, Ariza and Howard are 36 years old, and even the most capable "thick eyebrow brother" is almost 30 years old, which is indeed a veritable veteran team. Winhorst finally believed leaving the Lakers was James' best bet to win the championship again, but he thought it wouldn't happen: "I don't think he wants to move. "Then, no longer want to move also means that the Lakers will play like this next season, and will continue to be unable to make fans see hope."
Text/Beiqing Sports Liu Ailin