With LeBron James back, is it enough for the Lakers to make the playoffs?
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After missing a month of action, LeBron James has played an NBA game for the first time since suffering a foot injury against the Dallas Mavericks on February 26 in a 111-108 victory. Now that he’s back, the main question is will this be enough for the Lakers to make the playoffs or at least the Play-In tournament?
In the 13 games James missed with the foot injury, the Lakers were 8-5 without him and steadily staying at pace to make the Play-In tournament. While he was gone, guys like Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell, and of course, Anthony Davis took over for scoring, and they were successful in his absence.
In his first game back against the Chicago Bulls on Sunday, James came off the bench and played 30 minutes, which is fair because you don’t want to put too much pressure on him and re-injure his foot. He scored 19 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and dished out three assists but turned the ball over five times.
By the numbers, you can say it was a pretty good game, but if you look closer at the percentages, he shot zero percent at the three-point line, going 0-for-2, and shot 6-for-11 (54.5 percent) from the field, which is decent but not good.
What makes it even worse is that even with his best efforts, the Lakers lost a close game 111-108, with the Bulls winning their seventh game out of the last nine, staying put for the play-in. After the loss, the Lakers are 37-38 and in ninth place in the Western Conference, trying to fight to stay in the play-in tournament hunt.
With seven games left in the regular season, the Lakers cannot afford to lose, especially if they want to make the play-in at least. With James back, it brings the Lakers some hope, but spots 7-10 are so open, and then you have teams like the Mavericks and Jazz who are a couple of games behind the Lakers, and they still have a chance to sneak their way into the play-in.
Not only James but everyone else, such as Russell, Reaves, Davis, etc., need to step up in their roles to push the Lakers forward and keep the team afloat. In my personal opinion, with some of the teams behind them not too far off, I don’t think the Lakers will make the playoffs this year. After this season, it might be time for the Lakers to move on from James and build around the younger talent on the team.
For his entire career, especially when he was winning titles, he always had veteran players around him like Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving. However, it’s a new time now, and you can say it’s a young men’s game now. He’s still one of the top players in the league, but since he’s getting up in age, his time when he was the clear-cut favorite to win a championship has far passed him by.
So, after the season, the front office needs to make some changes and build for the future.
