"I will officially announce the season reimbursement, see you in the fall!" LeBron James's April Fool's Joke turned out to be a slur.
Because of the impact of the ankle injury, after that, the Lakers' superstars missed successive games with the Nuggets, Suns, and Warriors, and today officially confirmed that they would not play in the last two games of the regular season. This means that he voluntarily gave up the competition for the scoring king.
The 37-year-old James can still contribute 30.3 points, 8.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game, but such performance is not enough to lead the team to the playoffs, and lose the scoring champion, leaving his 2021-22 season empty-handed. Will this be a devastating blow to his historical rankings?
I've given everything for this season!
"Thank you for all your love for me, I would have liked to have ended the season with a winning stance and when I was on the pitch I had given everything I had for this season! See you all in the fall. ”
This is the lakers' official announcement of James' season reimbursement today, and he himself said goodbye to fans on social media.
Critics may wonder if James is really," as he puts it, "giving everything for this season," but fans who really care about and love the Lakers should be clear that this is definitely not James' self-proclaimed.
The Lakers in the 2021-22 season, all kinds of struggles do not need to be repeated, yesterday's battle against the Warriors, they even arranged the 38th set of starters of the season, and the personnel embarrassment caused by injuries can be seen.
In this context, the 37-year-old James, averaging 37.2 minutes per game, shot 21.8 times, scored 30.3 points, and all three statistics are new career highs for the Lakers.
Some people question james so hard to score, just want to compete for the scoring king, only personal data, do not care about the team's life or death. But the truth is that the Lakers have only won a total of 4 games after the All-Star, and these 4 victories have been bought by James alone to carry the team on his shoulders and desperately shoot points.
In those four games, he averaged 45 points per game, including two 50+ performances against the Warriors and Wizards in one week! If it were not for James "giving everything" on the court, the Lakers would be difficult to win.
Moreover, James' high scoring performance did not come at the expense of efficiency. In fact, this season, James still shot 52.4% of the shooting rate in the case of a significant increase in outside shots, setting a new Career High for the Lakers, and his 35.9% three-point shooting rate is also higher than the league average.
According to statistics, in the entire history of the NBA, there are only two players who have averaged at least 30+8+6 per game in a single season and can also shoot more than 50% of the shooting rate, one is James this season, and the other is Jordan in the 1988-89 season, and that year, Jordan was only 25 years old.
If "brushing data" can brush such efficiency, I believe that the head coaches of all teams in the league would like their players to brush up.
James doesn't score points to brush up on the data, but his all-out output does bring him infinitely closer to the top scorer. After playing his last game of the season against the Pelicans on April 2, James's 30.27 points per game was still the first in the league, and as long as he participated in two more games and met the attendance requirements, he had a good chance of winning the second scoring title after a gap of 14 years, breaking the two records of the oldest scorer and the largest scorer in the time span held by Jordan.
If he really cared so much about personal honor, he would not give up the opportunity to hit the record in such a situation.
Some people questioned James's failure to persist with injuries, fighting for the Lakers until the last moment, and even suspected that he was injured. But in fact, this season has been, in a way, the most worrying season of health since James entered the league.
Statistically, James' record of 26 games this season is not the worst, and he missed more games in the 2018-19 and 2020-21 seasons, but in those two seasons, he missed a lot of games due to an unexpected injury in the groin and ankle, with a certain degree of serendipity. This season, James has experienced ankle, abdomen and left knee injuries, especially the left knee injury, which is completely overworked, and people have felt the traces of age so clearly in James for the first time.
Again, James is 37 years old, this is his 19th NBA season, and there has never been a player in the entire history of the league who can play such a strong performance at his stage. Although these efforts have not been exchanged for an ideal result, the phrase "pay everything" is absolutely unashamed.
Should James pay for the Lakers' failures?
The Lakers' failure this season has been laid since the bad deal he made last summer. There are voices that believe that James is directly responsible for this.
CBS sports journalist Bill Reiter noted in his article that the Lakers' failure this season "comes down to the fault of the man with the highest power and the most say on the team, and he should be blamed for it — it was he who used his influence to push all the factors to where they are today, they went through a losing season, and they couldn't find a clear way forward." ”
"It's all LeBron James' fault."
Reiter mocked "James's greatest part is his influence on the team, his will, will always become the team's primary plan", and even pulled Anthony Davis out as an example, saying that "it is no secret that AD is prone to injury, and his only successful all-round in-depth performance in the playoffs occurred in an abnormal new crown season, and the mid-way shutdown helped him and the Lakers a lot." ”
But Reiter may have forgotten that it was James's joining that allowed the Lakers to end the darkest period in the history of the team, ending the embarrassing record of missing the playoffs for six consecutive years, and it was James who used his appeal to bring thick eyebrows, allowing the Lakers to regain the championship after 10 years.
ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst said James' career is "four years in a cycle" and will overdraft the team's future because of short-term goals. But in the NBA, the value of the championship trumps everything, and the Blazers have reached the Finals for 8 consecutive years under the leadership of Lillard and Terry Stotts, because they have never been able to make further breakthroughs, and in the end, the head coach is dismissed and the team is rebuilt.
If you can exchange the so-called "sacrifice of the future" for a championship trophy, I believe that every boss, every general manager, is willing.
The Lakers' personnel operations in the past few years have indeed been bad, but is this all James's decision? In 2019, Luke Wharton was out of class, the Lakers began a large-scale coach selection work, James was bent on hiring Tyrone Lue as the Lakers coach, Lu also accepted two rounds of interviews with the team, but it was Frank Vogel who finally won the coaching position.
At the time, New York Times reporter Marc Stein and The Athletic reporter Bill Oram both reported that the Lakers were worried that hiring Tyrone Lu would give James too much control and turned their attention to other candidates.
There are many similar examples, such as Alex Caruso, who is loved by Lakers fans. Last summer, his contract expired to become a restricted free agent, the Lakers originally enjoyed the initiative to renew the contract, and James was also very eager for the team to keep the defensive toughster, but as a result, the Lakers were unwilling to accept the two-year $20 million asking price and let him go to the Bulls.
Ostensibly, the Lakers made a binary choice between Caruso and Horton Tucker, but in fact, the Lakers, who have bird rights, can completely keep both of them at the same time without exceeding the salary cap. The only reason they chose to give up was to pay less luxury taxes.
For example, in the case of proving that Westbrook is not suitable for this team, the Lakers still have the opportunity to send him away before the deadline, using him back for Wall and Wood, and in this deal, they only need to give away the draft swap instead of sacrificing the first round of signings, but eventually give up because they don't want to pay taxes.
ESPN reporter Ramona Shelburne once broke the news on the show: The Lakers' efforts before the trade deadline were described as "half-hearted", and they were only willing to do some low-cost deals and did not want to bear any pain, whether it was the money for luxury taxes, future salary burdens, or draft picks.
Is this what James calls "absolute influence"?
Historical rankings devastated?
ESPN celebrity, one of the famous "Jenn black" Steven A. Smith announced as soon as possible after the Lakers officially missed the playoffs: "The discussion about the first person in history can be officially declared over."
But even Smith, while claiming that the topic was never necessary to be discussed, admitted that in his case, it had always been "Jordan first, James second."
Trying to challenge Jordan's position as the first person in history has always been an "impossible task." Because Jordan on the basketball court is a near-perfect existence. Not only is he dashing, his image outstanding, his stats gorgeous, and he has reached the finals six times without a single defeat, and has achieved three consecutive championships twice. From this point of view, he is almost insurmountable.
For the first time since leading the Cavaliers to victory in 2016, James has publicly acknowledged that chasing Jordan has always been his goal. After becoming the first player in history to lead three different teams to the title in 2020, he began to pose a real threat to Jordan's position.
Unfortunately, in the past two seasons, James and the Lakers have not performed as expected, which does make him more and more distant from the first person in history. However, until James officially announces his retirement and all the dust settles, nothing can be completely determined. Even now, in the minds of some, James is still their "best in history."
Judging by James' form this season, he can still play amazing data performances, but he can no longer lead the team to the playoffs on his own, or even go further, as he did at his peak. The Lakers' current salary structure is still bloated, and it is impossible to see a bright future in the short term.
In this way, Smith's words are not excessive. But also as Smith said, in the big ranking of the historical status of NBA players, James is still sitting on the second side.
People will always selectively forget, they harshly accuse James of not being able to lead the team to the playoffs, but they seem to forget, and Jordan did the same in the last two seasons of his career.
Although Jordan at that time was slightly older than James now, he played 4 seasons and 294 games less than James because of his two mid-way retirements.
James's greatness is beyond doubt, even if he is no better than Jordan.