Luke Walton wants LeBron James to get the ball in crunch-time situations for the Lakers. Stunning, right?
Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton recently cleared something up … a question that was clearly eating away at basketball fans, particularly, Lakers fans who were desperately trying to figure out exactly why their team recruited LeBron James to Los Angeles.
Apparently, James will be the guy that will be getting the ball when the game is on the line. He’s the guy that the Lakers want taking the do-or-die shots to win ballgames.
What a stunning turn of events this is. Who could’ve ever imagined that the Lakers would want to best basketball player in the world closing out games for them?
“When you get to the end of the game, that is what max players make max money for, that is what they do,” Walton said, via ESPN.com. “I can comfortably say that LeBron will be our first option at the end of ballgames if it’s close.”
Thanks for clearing that up, coach. We were all racking our brains trying to figure out which Lakers player would be the go-to guy in crunch time.
Walton has decided to give that role to the guy who is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time, or at the very least, the second-greatest ever behind only Michael Jordan.
That had to be a really difficult decision for the third-year Lakers head coach.
All jokes aside, this is why the Lakers wanted to bring James to L.A. in the first place. His presence alone makes the Lakers a title contender. At the very least, he’ll probably lead this team to the Western Conference Finals on his own shoulders.
In playoff games, he takes his greatness to an entirely new level, and he’s thrown a dagger through the hearts of many teams in crunch time situations.
So, it was pretty obvious already that James would be getting the ball late in games. But now we officially have verbal proof.