nba playoffs aka the 'offs (which includes the 'ins) 2021

one would think hell get there but i wouldnt put it at quite guaranteed lock status

look I ain't counting out the most freakish athlete of our generation but this had a big "last decent season" vibe to it, playing a zillion minutes has got to take its toll someday. as Jon Bois discovered the man has literally spent 0.3% of his life on the court in an NBA game

hes played 3 extra seasons worth of playoff games! and 18 regular seasons, of which he missed very few games, and played big minutes

if he absolutely has his heart set on that record then outside of catastrophic injury theres prob no stopping him but does anyone want to see 43 y/o lebron putting up 15 points a game for the cavs

holy shit if he can still put up 5 a game at age 43, absolutely

i dont see why he wouldnt be able to, what we saw in this series is prob pretty close to healthy 43 year old lebron

i mean jordan scored 20 at 40 and he didnt have the size or strength of bron

Lebron just doesn’t have fun playing basketball anymore.

yeah he seems kind of obsessed with his legacy, too much espn

He always finds a way to challenge himself tho, he needs to figure out what that is

i want the full bron experience. i want to see him break kareem's scoring record, join whichever team drafts bronny, i want to see him dunk on someone half his age. he should just run up the score on his career accolades.

it was not fun when he joined the lakers tbh, at least with the heatles it was an nwo heal turn kind of fun, the cleveland return and championship was a delight, this just felt mercenarial from jump. now he and AD's cap hit and the asset purge needed to get AD preclude them from getting significantly better.

if he wanted to go full messy, he could demand a trade lol

yeah going to the lakers was so much worse than the heat cause a. its the lakers b. at least the heat had one home grown star c. the heat played fun basketball and this lakers team does not

will be interesting to see what he looks like next season with a long by his standards offseason. it does feel like we’ve reached the stage where he’s limited by his body in normal human ways that he never was before.

yeah hes started getting inured the last few years where he never was before

before he came to the lakers his lowest season games played over 15 seasons were 62 69 74, three years with the lakers 55 67 45

in a few years people will probably forget he won a title there since it was during the weird bubble season

it basically doesnt count

He always finds a way to challenge himself tho, he needs to figure out what that is

*looking into a mirror*

i am lebron james and i lost to the suns in the first round

*punches mirror, glass flying*

Another prob now is will they attract the normal vets that lebron always plays with? Not sure anyone’s signing up for what they just watched. Lol at kuzmas salary not kicking in til next season.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/LAL.html

i think he should go for 40k career points and then call it quits

kuzma is the perfect guy who no one would know his name if he played for the hornets

totally unclear where the idea that kuzma is good came from even

at least L. Dort is a memorable name to see in the box score. K. Kuzma is nothing.

He almost scored 20ppg on the baby lakers. But if you just watch him play from game to game you know he’s not very good. Typical has one good game every 3-4 games guy

we all love lu dort dont we folks

oh wait Dort is OKC the other team no one knows a player on

im p sure kcp and kuzma are on the trade block, but who're they even getting in return for that? i mean if they wanna sign and trade demar, that might be the best they can do. that would give bron another playmaker but would not help their spacing at all.

his rookie year he made some shots as while guys like lonzo and ingram were struggling on a terrible team so he seemed “good” esp for a low draft pick and ppl needed some young guy on the lakers to be good, d’angelo russell was awful too. meanwhile the last two playoff runs he’s been completely inconsequential to their team meanwhile his 3/39 extension hasn’t been kicked in yet, it’s just brutal

its not a huge contract but you want at least like a borderline starter for that money

"if u make above mle you should be a starter-level player" is a good rule of thumb

the thing that’s hard to figure out about lebron is whether his injury this year was just a freak thing or if it actually signals a newfound weakness in his body. i remember feeling on several occasions when he was on the heat that he had just sprained his ankle severely during a game while he like writhed on the floor then 3 mins later he’d jump 13 feet in the air for a dunk. but maybe this one was just bad i mean solomon hill is a big guy, it’s not like lebron turned his ankle so much as he has 230 pounds crash into it at a bad angle

yeah kuz is playing more in the 7-10 range

bron has missed a ton of games the last few years i think its safe to say hes not invulnerable to injury anymore

re: kuz its not a turrrrible contract, its just a bit of an overpay by a team that didnt have many avenues to sign outside FAs, and its only 3 years so its p movable but they're p limited as far as moving picks is concerned.

yeah its hard to see how they get any meaningful deals done without picks

High ankle sprain different than a normal one and he’s just old now so they don’t heal as fast. Prob time to stop playing him 35 mpg but not sure that’s possible with ad as a teammate and a team that won’t make the playoffs without him playing a lot

kuzma is about to be the lakers third highest paid player and he averaged 6 ppg in this series while not being good at anything else, they don’t have much room for error with their team building. what’s even his trade value?

theres prob a dumb team that still thinks hes good but yeah youre not gonna get much

lakers should prob prioritize keeping their guys healthy over playoff seeding especially now since 10 teams make it, they kinda did that this year except it turned out bron and brow were actually just badly injured

also feel like the lakers didn’t need to give kuzma an extension at the beginning of the season, they could’ve just waited until after the season maybe they’d feel differently now that it’s clear they need to remake their roster in a pretty real way. classic case of a team overvaluing someone they drafted and developed into a reasonably decent player. this tweet is funny

Player option on a non-max rookie extension is a first in league, a creative wrinkle that allows Kuzma into unrestricted free agency in his prime at 28. Smart move and great benefit for Kuzma should he out-perform this deal headed into summer of 2023.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 20, 2020

ah nevertheless

Crazy that like not one single rotation player played well.

Lakers shooters this playoffs

Schroder:
14 PPG
40 FG%
31 3P%

Kuzma:
6 PPG
29 FG%
17 3P%

KCP:
6 PPG
38 FG%
21 3P%

Caruso:
6 PPG
37 FG%
29 3P%

Matthews:
6 PPG
30 FG%
28 3P%

Morris:
2 PPG
22 FG%
25 3P%

McLemore:
2 PPG
22 FG%
33 3P%

Literally no one even shot 35% from three. pic.twitter.com/gtorfkMddF

— StatMuse (@statmuse) June 4, 2021

just checked, lakers owe nola their 2022 1RP no matter where it lands, swaps in 23 and 24, so i guess the lakers have 2025-28 1RPs to play with

i mean at this rate u just say fuck it and trade those too to maximize your AD+bron window, right?

Lebron was having fun just a couple of games ago

LeBron was showboating in Game 3 and proceeded to lose 3 straight games and get eliminated 😭 pic.twitter.com/MtqUOoqgvK

— Guru (@DrGuru_) June 4, 2021

those swaps could turn out pretty nice for the pelicans

Don’t blame crowder for Salsa dancing on his grave

crowder is one of those guys who's a Gamer