Once superstars reach a certain age, nothing can be taken for granted. It's a lesson the Lakers have learned in the NBA Finals time and time again. In 2004, a 32-year-old Shaquille O'Neal became the oldest player in Finals history to score at least 35 points and grab 20 rebounds. In 1989, a 42-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar turned back the clock in Game 3 of the Finals to give the Lakers 24 points and 13 rebounds with Magic Johnson sidelined due to injury. The Lakers lost both games. They lost both series.
There was an undercurrent of waste to both performances. The losses themselves aren't as devastating as the context. How many games like that did either have left in the tank? As it turned out, not too many, and the Lakers squandered both. They squandered another on Friday as LeBron James posted arguably the most efficient Finals game in NBA history. James set a new NBA record in shooting 71.4 percent from the field in a 40-point Finals performance, and in the process, he posted 13 rebounds and seven assists.
The Lakers can take some solace in the fact that such explosions are hardly rare for James. There have been 23 Finals games in which a player has finished with at least 40 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, and LeBron has eight of them. He came two points short of doing so in the Western Conference finals clincher against Denver. LeBron isn't on a retirement tour like Kareem was in '89. He is still very much the best player in the NBA.
But he's the best player in the NBA with the slightest of limitations that didn't previously exist. James played "only" 41 minutes and 51 seconds in Game 5. That's an enormous workload for a regular-season game and a downright minuscule one by LeBron playoff standards. It ranks as the 135th-most he's played in any playoff game, and 30th in the Finals. That stands out in comparison to Miami star Jimmy Butler, who sat for only 48 seconds of Game 5.
LeBron still looks mostly like LeBron when he plays, but he plays less than ever, and it suggests that the burden of playing the way he does takes a significant toll. Butler is 31. When James was 31, he posted back-to-back 40-point Finals wins against the Golden State Warriors. I doubt anyone would expect Butler to do what he's doing in this series four years from now. James has defied the age curve at every turn, but he is still fundamentally human. Consecutive masterpieces aren't exactly the norm.
But he might need another to close out the Heat.
Anthony Davis wasn't exactly his typically springy self after aggravating an existing heel injury in Game 5. There's no telling how healthy he'll be for Game 5, and if he can't defend Butler, the Lakers will have to change their entire gameplan. Aside from Davis, his teammates are shooting only 32.5 percent from behind the arc in the Finals. James may have made the right play statistically in passing the final shot of Game 5 off to Danny Green, but the Lakers can handle only so many more misses. The more shots LeBron takes, the more his teammates don't.
It's a phenomenon James knows intimately. He's had plenty of his own gems wasted by inferior teammates, none more so than the 51-point tour-de-force he dropped on Golden State in Game 1 of the 2018 Finals. His teammates shot 3 of 16 from behind the arc off of his passes in the loss. His shooting guard forgot the score. He punched a whiteboard, broke his hand and the series was lost.
There's no telling how far that injury went in slowing him down against the Warriors, but 51 points fell to 29 in Game 2 and never rose beyond 33 in the series. At 33, LeBron had one classic in the tank. At 35, he's already spent that one. He hasn't scored 30 points in consecutive games this postseason since a first-round walkover against the No. 27-ranked defense in the NBA.
He also hasn't needed to. The Lakers went 15-3 in the first three rounds, and only one win came by fewer than five points. For all we know, his limits appear lower because his limits haven't been tested.
They were on Friday. LeBron played Game 5 like someone that didn't plan to play a Game 6. It was the best game he's played all season, and now, if Davis is compromised and his shooters don't course-correct, he might need to top it to deliver a championship to the Lakers.
This is LeBron James we're talking about. History suggests that he can do anything. But it also punishes teams that squander throwback performances like the one he offered on Friday. Previous Lakers teams lost championships in part because they couldn't capitalize on the opportunities their greying legends gave them, and in part because those legends could only give them those opportunities once. The Lakers might be able to afford to check one of those boxes. They can't check both if they plan to avoid the same fate as their 1989 and 2004 counterparts.
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October 10, 2020 at 09:36PM
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LeBron James just posted a Finals masterpiece, and now he might need to do it again to clinch the championship - CBS Sports
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