LABron James Discussion: The Final Year?

Keeping Rui while Lebron is old is actually solid for us and everyone slots in pretty well.

Luka / Gabe
Reaves / Smart
Vando / Knecht
Rui / LaRavia
Ayton / Hayes

That team is still good for regular season wins.

 

Rui gets his shot at showing that he can carry some of load post Lebron. Let's go Yasuke!!

 

lol sciatica is a b**** and another sign lebron is almost as old as i am.

but yes, with the tools at his disposal, you can recover from it. with mine...you just kinda deal with flare ups.

 

Somehow, Rui always gets blamed for everything

 

Sciatica is a b**** and flares up easily. If LeBron has anything more than a mild case IMO he should not even try to play till Jan. 1st. I dealt with it for a few years but finally figured it out. For anyone suffering from it; during recovery time, roll up a towel and keep pressure on the small of your back every time you sit down. In the car, home wherever you are. The other things that are important are 3D exercises and full resting squats for 5-10 minutes a day. For awhile I was thinking the kids were going to put me on an iceberg and float me out to sea but now I'm back to doing anything I want, pretty much...lol.

 

Sciatica is an upset sciatic nerve that is in the glute and sends signals down both legs. In a worse case scenario you get what’s known as drop leg where you lose signalling to your foot or feet. In most cases it’s jsut sharp pain radiating down the back of both legs.

I’m one of the lucky few people where my sciatic nerve is actually entrenched into my glute medius. For me it’s about managing that for life and I’ve had it since my late teens. So it’s not necessarily an age thing.

For LeBron (and I imagine most NBA players) sciatica and what they would call back spasms is jsut upset nerves at all the compressive forces their spines are under playing on wood and jumping and moving so explosively. LeBron has dealt with back stuff for a while, this is just a flare up he has to deal with, loosen up the area and let the back go from a fight or flight seized up response to a relaxed, strengthened ready to play scenario.

What they probably won’t say is that playing golf probably upset his back until it gets used to it…

 

The difference between regular folk who lead a sedentary lifestyle (like us) and elite athletes is that our flare ups occur usually from too much sitting, weaknesses and imbalances.

For LeBron, I imagine it’s the addition of a new stimulus that has overloaded one side of his back (which has been classically his weak point). As a result the recovery of an athlete with sciatica is generally pretty straight forward, take the body out of the spasm response, do some exercises that prime the muscles that turned off during the fight or flight response and get them firing and then slowly work back up to full capacity making sure there are no reoccurrences. In the past with treatment I could be back in 2-4 weeks. So I imagine LeBron needs 2 to start training and another 2-4 to ramp up.

 

I get that but my main concern is it flaring back up. It is debilitating, the unknown is not knowing what level it is at. At least I haven't heard that yet. I know LeBron has the best of the best in care but I wanted to throw out a little bush wisdom...lol

 

My guess is age caught up with him and he was doing the same old routine that he always did during training camp and might have aggravated something.

Just a learning process for him and his trainer to change their training regime.

LeBron's 41 after this season. Any other 41 year old is retired or sitting on the bench so they aren't expected to be in the best physical condition. It's natural for a player of his status and age to get injured, unfortunately.

 

I had it hit me out of the blue 1st time in life about 6 years ago around some video jobs I was working. On right side and it hurt like hell walking. Other cam guys were giving me their tips and tried them but no success. Until boom!! My oldest son picked up somewhere the info to lie on my back with knees up and heels drawn back close to butt. Then doing sets of lifting the butt up and holding. Knocked it out in less than a week and any time I feel a rare twinge coming on now I do a few sets. Easy to do in bed.

 

That is a good one, nice to know your son is looking after the old man.

 

And THIS is exactly why we let him leave this summer.

 

I also had sciatica for a while after I herniated a couple of discs. Took me a long time to completely get rid of it.

Needless to say, this isn't the training camp we wanted.

 

Comes down to we don't know what the level of his sciatica is. If it is moderate or above it will be awhile. If we play this right and don't rush it this can still end well. This situation will shorten LeBron's season. Less pounding could equal healthier version for the playoffs. Gives us a chance to solidify a starting line up and see if Him is really Him. IMO he is. This gives JJ the chance to shine as well.

 

win games? sure

get out of the play-in with lebron either out or playing hurt? not likely

 

Well..this gives Luka, the FO, media, and the fans, an opportunity to evaluate the supporting cast, around Luka post Lebron.

This should be interesting..

 

On the bright side, we’re in much better shape to handle not having Lebron than in past years. Luka, AR and Ayton should keep us afloat. Not counting Rui because he’s been subpar in the last two preseason games.

 

This may be a blessing in disguise for the long-term. It gives us a look at the non-Lebron floor with this group and identify what do we need to add to it and who to keep this offseason.

Even when Bron clears the books we won't have cap space to sign a star (nor any will be available). We will be able to retain AR/Rui/Ayton for example and add a couple role players, while losing Vincent and Kleber salary slots.
We'll just get very below the 1st apron

So our group next year won't be considerably different from this one (at least from a contract slot view), meaning that playing without him for the next month will give us a pretty good look ahead

Great opportunities for Rui (must get close to the 20ppg), Ayton (really nice to have him going offensively early, so he gets more motivated), LaRavia and Gabe (can handle more in the non-Luka units as they would always have Bron.

From a Bron perspective, he's finally old lol this was coming, so it's good it came at a point we can prepare for it on-court, we got freaking Luka and when we didn't gave him a contract in the summer