Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Lakers are the No. 4 seed but heavy underdogs, preparing to face the Houston Rockets in a first-round playoff series.
- LeBron James will once again shoulder an enormous burden as the team’s two primary playmakers — Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves are probably sidelined.
- This potential performance could redefine legacy conversations and offer a defining moment in an already historic career.
Despite being the fourth seed, the Los Angeles Lakers are a major underdog in their first round series against the Houston Rockets (FanDuel currently has them with +530 odds of advancing to the second round). They have been terrible this season against teams with a top-10 point differential (like the Rockets). But even without that, barring a major miracle, they will face them without their two best players: Austin Reaves and Luka Dončić, or at the very least with them hampered by nagging injuries or rusty from the time they've missed.
Can the GOAT pull one more rabbit out of his hat?
With Reaves and Doncic (probably) out of the mix, the burden falls on the broad shoulders of LeBron James -- the player many believe to be the greatest of all-time. Unfortunately, James is no spring chicken. This season is his 23rd in the NBA, and his birth certificate reads 41 years old. For most of the season, he has operated as a third option, doing a lot of the dirty work for Doncic and Reaves.
However, in his last couple of games, James has shown that he can still ramp up his usage. In his final four games of the season (without Doncic and Reaves), James averaged 25.5 points, 11 assists, 6.8 rebounds, and 2.5 steals per game on a 62.3 true shooting percentage. The Lakers had an excellent net rating of plus-25.4 in his minutes and won three of those four games. It does need to be noted that those wins came against the Utah Jazz, Phoenix Suns (without Denver Booker), and Golden State Warriors (without Stephen Curry and a number of other key players).
This season (527 minutes), the Lakers have a plu-12 net rating when James has been on the floor without Dončić or Reaves (per PBP Stats). In those minutes, James is scoring 40.9 points per 100 possessions on 59.5 true shooting percentage.
These are some promising indicators. James has long been praised for his superhuman longevity, and even at 41, he is still capable of some Herculean performances. However, these numbers only came in games against undermanned units or in short stints during the course of a game. Asking James to do this for an entire seven0game series while likely playing close to 40 minutes per game (he is averaging 33.2 minutes per game) is an insane request. And even if he can don the cape for that long, it still may not be enough to the Rockets, who finished the regular season with the fifth-best point differential in the league (per Cleaning the Glass).
With that said, man, would this be the ultimate swan song for James. His whole career he's had to deal with the comparisons to Michael Jordan and the debates of who is better. And while I think the conversation boils down to what matters more to you (peak or longevitity), if James can pull of this feat without Doncic and Reaves, it is hard to argue against his legacy.
The Lakers are going to be facing a lot of uncertainty over the coming weeks. But one thing is forsure: to pull off the miracle of a lifetime, they need James to pull one more rabbit out of his legendary hat.
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