LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

i wish i was as optimistic as some of you

it's not exactly confidence-inspiring when their only wins this season have come against houston (twice, one barely in OT,) san antonio (twice, one barely in OT,) charlotte (in OT,) miami without butler (in OT,) cleveland, and memphis. only once have they held a team to under 100 and that was the first win against houston. the fact that they haven't blown anyone out concerns me, especially when they've played so many weak teams. and then there's the fact that they've lost twice to a god awful OKC team

good teams have beaten this team with ease, and they can barely even beat the worst teams

 

Trade Westbrook , have Bron and AD at full strength , Ariza reborns from his ashes ,THT becomes an above average team defender and we'll be great !

In others words one of us has equal chances to become a multi millionaire !

 

I know that on paper it’s obviously not ideal to be so reliant on a player who will be 37 next month. But the reality is that when Lebron is healthy and playing, he’s still the best player in the world.

Glad to hear his return is imminent. I’m not going to panic too much about this season until we see how we look with Lebron being there for a string of consecutive games.

 

we're missing chemistry and continuity, and we let some of that go in trades in exchange for top end talent. Hopefully what we let get away we can replace before the end of the year. Some other teams are looking pretty solid.

 

gs and phx running away right now, but what do they have in common? healthy stars and returning basically the same team as last year. honestly, the clippers should be doing better, all things considered. they're used to playing without kawhi and returned nearly everyone again.

 

Let's see....the Milwaukee Bucks are 7-8, lost their last two games, getting blown out by 20 by the Hawks in their last game. They lost by 42 pts to Miami, lost to the Spurs and Minn. They were 3-7 before this game. These are the defending Champions coming back with most of their roster intact. What happened? Giannis has missed 1 game, Jru Holliday missed 6 games early in the season and Khris Middleton missed the last 8. You know talent matters in this league. There isn't this huge gap between these teams as folks seem to think it is. Lebron James is not some Khris Middleton caliber player either, this is only Talen's 3rd game back, and I still say that Nunn will be the 5th best player on this squad when he returns. I think some patience is in order here.

 

We are missing Lebron James...he's a pretty good player. I assumed that this team was built with the idea of Lebron James playing on it.

 

If he's ready to go bring it on. If he's not he should continue to sit, an ab strain isn't some career threatening injury. However I wouldn't be trying to rush him back early, just to win some meaningless early season game, it's not like the teams in the West are running away.

 

Lebron is overrated at 37



Still great tho

(Availability matters)

 

I think he's still better than Middleton or Holliday at 37.

 

The problem is all time greats get compared to their peak. He’s not that guy any longer, but we’ll get flashes of him.

But has he grown in other facets of the game and leadership to make up for the declining athleticism?

I think this year will be one of his biggest challenges. Integrating so many new faces into a championship squad while not being available to play as much, and also giving up full time control of the basketball, will make this his toughest test yet.

 

25 pts 5.5 reb AND 7 assists for this season are strong numbers. I get what you are saying tho, but I'm going take a wait and see approach on this age angle for a minute. A guy rolled into his ankle, I can't put that on age, I had a high ankle sprain at 16 and it took me 4 months to get back to normal. I look around the league and young guys are getting hurt missing games all over the place, I pointed out Middleton and Holliday, but Tucker, Nunn and Reaves are young too. I mean look at AD, Murray, Klay and Kawhi last season. If he was having knee or back issues are something, I'd be concerned, but an ab strain, not so much. I think James is smart, I'm sure he can see the end is getting closer and that's why he pushed for these moves to be made. I think he wants to go out chasing chips, not fade off into the sunset. Mj was still dropping 30's, 40's and a 50 piece at 38 and 39 in Washington, he went out avg 22/5/6 . I think Lebron is in better shape than Jordan was and still has some gas left in the tank. He told Kawhi when we were trying to sign him that he was looking to step back some and hand over the reigns to he and AD. Then he went out and won a Final's MVP. I'm not ready to write this guy off, as some kind of minor factor right now. This might be his toughest test, I'm not sure but I believe that he is equipped to face it either way.

 

He's a once in a generation talent. We're all hoping he's not done writing chapters in his HOF book. That's for sure.

 

The other camera guy on the job yesterday whom I had never met before was knowledgeable about pro basketball and the Lakers somewhat, and still had the pre LeBron virtually saving the franchise …. same negative opinion about him we most all had, so I had to defend LBJ to him. When I asked who his favorite team was, small world department …. hard core and long time Bulls fan. Who couldn’t understand why we let Caruso go.

 

Lebron loves China



I find it funny that Enes Kanter is doing this. I understand, but it's more impactful coming from a player who is making a difference for his team. I'm not sure that many people care what Kanter things fair or not.

 

damn, his rectum AND his abs?

 

Unlike the WTA over the disappearance of Peng Shuai.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/peng-shuai-disappearance-china-womens-tennis-wta-11637328948

They’ve got the balls. Will Bron tonight while getting mocked …. and play?

 

Well he deserves criticism for his stance: it's a tough situation to be in as shown by the err walkback of John Cena on Taiwan.
So much money and the money is not just for the players and actors but the downstream business they work for.

Still it's the right thing to stand up to authoritarianism and good on the WTA and bad on Lebron. Kanter is brave dude: I think he's pretty much ostrasized from Turkey due to his criticism of Erdogan as well

 

Words are one thing. What’s Kanter doing to actually solve the problem???