In the long, stored story of Los Angeles Lakers rivalry with Boston Celtics, there have been many LA losses more difficult for Lakers to swallow than Saturday’s return of 111-101.
But that does not make the end of an eight-game winning line, punctured by the outcome of LeBron James due to a groin injury, easier for Los Angeles.
ESPN’s Dave McMenamine reported that “it is too early to project a correct timetable”, although he added that a source suggested that James could meet a week’s long absence.
Don’t think of the rest of a four-game road swing that started with Saturday’s loss and sends the Lakers to meet other finals hopeful Milwaukee and Denver; “Weeks” in this seasonal responsibility can extend into the playoffs.
Even when Luka Dončić has settled in and regained his MVP level since he came over in a trade from Dallas, Los Angeles remains a team that depends on James as much as its newly acquired superstar. Among the championship challengers with a little more than a month until the mail season begins, Lakers can be the most dependent on two primary superstars.
Before James left Saturday’s game, that confidence was ironically-Ironically in it, while Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 71 Celtics points, the game of Derrick White emphasized a certain X-factor Los Angeles may not have consistently in its present state.
White got 10 points, passed for seven assists, took five returns, had one steal and one block and ended with a game-high plus-17 plus-minus rating. Los Angeles has an effective third score option on the perimeter of Austin Reaves, but a spark plug with everything may be a key quality that is missing in this Lakers range.
Of course, the supplementary pieces are irrelevant if James is not on or close to his best physically. And at 40 years old, it is natural to wonder how much more effective James can continue to recover near a physical top before injury.
James has largely been an agentless wondering in the latter stages of his career. Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was at the losing end of some of the above-mentioned intestinal-shooting losses to Celtics-but also responsible for making the Boston fans’ skin as green as their team’s uniforms on many occasions were the former benchmark for lunge.
Even when the captain remained a key fixture at Lakers Finals, in the late 1980s, Magic Johnson had clearly taken the reins as the team’s driving force. Dončić is a star that can be compared to magic both in style and ability, but much like the older James.
Never was James’ father time play more clearly than during the days until this visit to Boston. In the middle of Lakers’ winning line, James NBA’s first 50,000 point was man. Then, in defeat on Saturday, he went out for the dressing room an assistant shy for his 152nd career Trippel-Double: 22 points, 14 returns and nine assists.
In that respect, there is perhaps a weird and really unhappy parallel to draw with another Lakers legend, Kobe Bryant. Bryant, approaching the end of his 17th season, was in the MVP race and third in the NBA in points when he lost 34 points in an April victory over the Golden State.
Bryant also broke his Achilles in that game, and the leading goal scorer in Lakers’s history was never the same for the rest of his career.
The good news in James’s case is that even the less optimistic possibility of a week’s long absence, as ESPN suggested, is considerably less harmful in the long term than an Achilles injury that was the one that Bryant was affected.
The sobering part of James’ injury – both for the Lakers and the NBA fans in general – is that it is a sharp reminder the time we have left to take in without doubt the largest, and certainly the most lasting, career in the league is limited.
