Lakers are the hottest trash right now. The kind of trash you smell on Bourbon Street the next day Mardi Gras. They have 10 games under .500, sit in 9th place and fight for their last chance to disappoint their home crowd in what could be a first of two games. Russel Westbrook is hurling false rebukes to his haters as if they were pulling up 3 seconds with 15 plus seconds on a spinning clock. Anthony Davis is injured. I don’t have a spike, it’s just his natural state.
The team is essentially LeBron James trying to fix Westbrook’s flaws nightly. The only reasons to watch them – other than IVs of endorphins that left LeBron reeling on a bad Lakers team he made – are to “watch” LeBron pass a milestone or try to score 50.
He’s been trying to do the following two things for about a month now, and that makes a lot of sense since that’s the only way for them to win games. It’s also the only way this season has become important to LeBron. He is leading the league in scoring this season and if he wins the scoring title he will be the oldest player to do so in three years. The oldest player officially won? Michael Jordan at 34 years old.
That is certainly an impressive achievement. Early LeBron’s longevity and durability were second to none, and those traits were a big reason why he became a target for so many. James haters should brace themselves for the christening after he breaks, and is likely to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s regular-season scoring record. (I don’t know how they’ll end the match after the bougainvillea falls and LeBron then collapses in excitement.)
I have accepted that he will win the scoring title this year. He’s at even 30 PPG – with Joel Embiid (29.8) and Giannis Antetokuonmpo (29.7) threatening him – and manages to make as many third shots per game (21.7) in his career and the most since 2007-08. Apparently, Westbrook’s tendency to chase the index influenced LeBron because why would he do this? Oh, that’s right, more ammo for the GOAT debate.
Antetokounmpo is close to hitting that mark and a possible LeBron pass, but unlike the Lakers, the Bucks have caught on fire and have been healthy lately, leading 8-2 in their past 10 games and bringing Brook Lopez and Pat Connington back in. in rotation. Milwaukee will have to avoid defeats like Tuesday’s 126-98 win over Chicago, limiting Giannis’ minutes and effort to shoot. (He finished with 25 points on 12 shots in 30 minutes, five points, 6.5 attempts and a few minutes less than his season average.)
While I’d love to see Embiid burn the league from here on out, now he has to make sure that the gluttonous James Harden gets filled. In the 25 games before Harden was included in the squad, Embiid only scored 25 points twice. Since Harden stormed onto the pitch, Embiid has failed to score 25 goals three times in 12 competitions, per Basketball-Reference.
What LeBron is doing at his age is remarkable and should be celebrated as such if, you know, it’s not for the sake of self-praise and if a scoring title isn’t won by the fans. His grave blew up as if it were a real title. The twilight of Jordan’s career, aka his time in Washington, is likely to annoy MJ’s detractors as this race for the scoring title is open to those who don’t like LeBron, but it doesn’t have the mees, social media flattery and the most exhausting sports debate of my life.
This is one of the better goalscoring races I can remember, and it would be really fun to enjoy it the way fans enjoyed the legendary George Gervin scoring race- David Thompson in 1977-78. Only I can’t because everything LeBron does this season is about his legacy because the Lakers are the greasy fire of his own making.
Would he be frantically chasing the scoring title if this were a perfectly healthy Lakers team? Maybe it’s because the team’s construction is seriously flawed, but probably not. While the consolation prize is still impressive, it feels like a guy looking for an itemboy because his original goal of pursuing another Larry O’Brien Trophy – the only piece of hardware that mattered in his competition with Jordan – exploded.
