The date is 12 March, and the Los Angeles Lakers are in the midst of a run that’s garnering a lot of well-deserved attention, in a month that sees them lose just two contests and win 15. The spirit of the locker room is at an all-time high, and it’s clear in talking to LeBron James, the 41-year-old storied veteran and greatest-of-all-time candidate who recently put his ego aside to accept a role as the team’s third option, that he believes what many around the NBA are starting to as well: his Lakers have a real shot at contention.
“As you get older, you appreciate the moment more than anything. When you’re younger, you think about what you’ve done in the past, or what’s to come in the future,” he tells me when I ask how he’s been able to be so present of late, in light of the ups and downs of a topsy-turvy Lakers season. “But the only thing that we know for sure is happening is the moment.”
The sentiment was more poignant than even James knew at the time. The wind would be swiftly and mercilessly knocked out of those buoyant sails just a few short weeks later, on 2 April, when in the throes of a biblical drubbing at the hands of MVP frontrunner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his class-of-the-conference Thunder, the door to the Lakers’ postseason was seemingly slammed in their faces in downtown Oklahoma City. The Lakers were already emotionally wallopped, outmatched by orders of magnitude, down 31 at half-time. And then, in the span of a couple of minutes in the third quarter, Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, the team’s backcourt starters, were both sidelined indefinitely with injury. The blow was devastating. The season was over. That is, until it wasn’t.
As recently as a month ago, it appeared that James’s days as the No 1 option were behind him, and for good reason. He’s a quadragenarian, the oldest player in the NBA for two years running. He shares a team with Dončić, the 27-year-old perennial MVP candidate and heir apparent to the Lakers franchise. But when, just a few short weeks before the postseason was set to begin, the Lakers lost their two leading scorers, James was left with two choices: call it a season, or attempt to carry the team on his 6ft 9in frame, as he’d done so many times before.
Neither Vegas nor basketball experts gave the Lakers any chance against the Houston Rockets headed into their first-round series, in which they grabbed a commanding 3-0 lead before sealing the victory in six games in Houston on Friday night. The doubt was justifiable; the Lakers were at a clear talent disadvantage without Dončić and Reaves. (The Rockets’ Kevin Durant would end up missing five of the six games in the series.) And the upset was, to be sure, a true team effort, filled with storybook storylines galore: Luke Kennard, a trade-deadline castaway from Atlanta, essentially won Game 1. Marcus Smart, believed by many to be washed up when the Lakers acquired him last summer, proved wholly indispensable, as both a dirty work guy and an unlikely scoring resource. Deandre Ayton, the much-maligned center from the top of Dončić’s draft class whom Portland paid to go away last summer, was invaluable both defensively and on the glass. And JJ Redick, the “podcaster” second-year head coach who took immense flak after a disappointing debut postseason outing against the Minnesota Timberwolves last season, proved his mettle in this series as both a tactician and leader.
But the story of the series was James, who, in a critical Game 3, not only got a gutsy steal on the Rockets’ Reed Sheppard and hit a miracle of a three-pointer at the end of regulation, forcing the game to overtime (and ultimately a win), but did so mere minutes after going on a 10-0 Lakers run with his own son, including a senior-to-junior highlight alley-oop. Throughout the series, James turned back the clock on both ends, averaging 23 points, eight assists and seven rebounds with nearly two steals per game. He was, by any measure, the best player on the floor. To say that no one has ever done what he’s doing at this age is an understatement. The truth is, no one has even come close.
“I’ve done it throughout my career, but they still have to accept it,” James said in the locker room after Game 6, on slotting back into a leadership role for the team on which he’d taken a step back. “For them to allow me to lead them, that means a lot to me.” Redick, clearly moved after witnessing, first-hand, yet another chapter in the LeBron James storybook, could only shake his head. “For him to do it again, to answer the bell again, it’s really … it’s baffling, in some ways,” Redick said Friday night, attempting to stifle a grin. “The leadership aspect, he just has this ability to set the tone for the entire group, and he did that again tonight, and our guys responded. And I’m really happy for him.”
Father Time is undefeated, so the saying goes. But, as it turns out, his record isn’t quite so simple. James, well into his third decade as the face of the league and anywhere between 10 to 20 years older than most of his competitors, has proved a formidable challenger. “I’m kicking his ass,” James deadpanned, chuckling, after the series clincher. Twenty-three rounds in, he has Time on the ropes.
Reaves, who was able to return from a severe oblique strain and provide reinforcements for the final two games of the series, said he doesn’t take what James is doing for granted. “I told him after the game, I’d like to think we have a pretty good relationship, [so] I went over to him and I was like, ‘You’re insane. The stuff that you’re doing … It’s not normal,’” he said. “With age, or whatever, he’s been in the league for 23 years … The way he can [still] control a game, it’s impressive. I don’t think you can say in words how special he was, not just tonight, but this series, this year. I’m just happy that I don’t have to play against him.”
The Lakers will go on to face the aforementioned thorn in their side, the Thunder, in the Western Conference semi-finals. Certainly, this would not have been part of the plan, had Los Angeles had their druthers about a round-two opponent, especially with Dončić still sidelined. But, then again, nothing for Los Angeles went according to plan this year. It was going to be a transitional year, until things started to click, and the chemistry was too potent to deny. Then it was destined to be a tale of woe, a “what if?” footnote in the briefly intersecting careers of two megastars at different points in their trajectories in James and Dončić. In any of a myriad possible timelines, this wasn’t LeBron James’s team to carry. In all but one of them, we had seen the last of a superhero run from him in the NBA postseason.
None of this was supposed to happen. But the basketball gods work in mysterious ways, and for the moment, the story isn’t over quite yet.