LeBron James CALLS OUT Lakers teammates, demands more in Game 2
LeBron James has identified the cause of the Lakers’ loss to Denver Nuggets, citing the entire team's lack of effort.
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LeBron James (Credits: ESPN)
The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a tragic defeat to the Denver Nuggets in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. The closing minutes shook up the men in purple and blue. Their superstar, LeBron James, choked in the fourth quarter as the remainder of the team watched. “The King” was questioned for his terrible decision-making skills that might have cost the Lakers the game. These included a missed 3-pointer which could’ve tied the game, two missed free throws and terrible ball handling. James lost the ball to Nikola Jokic in a clutch steal as the Lakers lost 132-126 in Game 1.
Though, according to LeBron James, his performance towards the end wasn’t the cause of the loss, but rather something different. James went on to cite the entire team’s lack of effort from the very beginning as the cause of the loss.
James said, “We gotta understand that we gotta start from tipoff. They punched us in the mouth. They had more offensive rebounds than we had rebounds in the 1st half.”
The Lakers were trailing by 21 points at the beginning of the second half, signaling something did go wrong. The likes of Dennis Schroder and D’Angelo Russell were disappointed as the former scored 6 points while the other added 8. Russell played for 26 minutes, being pretty much inactive throughout the entirety of his time on the court.
Even Austin Reaves, who was one of the stars of the show for the Lakers tonight, turned up late in the game. Per James, the Lakers didn’t go hard enough in the first half, which seems about right.
LeBron James cries lack of effort as the Lakers lose to the Nuggets
LeBron James stood by his words from the very beginning of the presser. When asked about the first half of the game and what went wrong, he reiterated the importance of the first half. He said, “We’ll be better,” while mentioning all the things the Nuggets did differently. He added, “We know we didn’t play up to our capabilities in that first half…we’ll be better in Game 2. That’s for sure.”
James went on to say, “I know the game is won in 48 minutes but they set the tone in the first 24 minutes and we was playing catch up for the next 24.” He then added, “We have to play better, we have to rebound better. I thought we did a good job of not turning the ball over and that’s one thing we’ve been very conscious about in the postseason but we’ve been better in transition, tonight we wasn’t that great.” He ideally recapitulated where the Lakers went wrong in the game and how what happened in the closing minutes wasn’t as important.
It’ll be interesting to see how the LA Lakers plan on bringing changes to their strategy, which clearly went wrong in Game 1. As for James, he’ll have a tough time dealing with trolls on social media who won’t let go of his bricks from tonight. Game 2 between the Nuggets and the Lakers goes down on Friday!
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Harshit Singh
(434 Articles Published)