In the first week of the regular season, LeBron James expressed his desire to participate in all 82 games this year, earning the support of Lakers head coach JJ Redick. However, after the Lakers’ loss to Minnesota on Monday, Redick indicated that reconsideration of that goal might be necessary, especially in light of James’ recent difficulties and the team’s overall performance.
“I don’t know that’s in the best interest of him and us if he does that, but if he’s feeling well and feeling good, then he should play,” Redick stated, as cited by Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “But we obviously want to … manage that as best we can.”
Following a disappointing performance in Monday’s game, where he scored only 10 points on 4-of-16 shooting and committed six turnovers, James’ average has dropped to 16.8 points and five turnovers per game. Over the past six games, he has posted a shooting percentage of .398/.100/.857. The Lakers initially boasted an offensive rating of 118.3—ranking fourth in the NBA—through their first 15 games, but this has since declined to 102.4 in the past six outings, the third-lowest across the league since November 23.
While it may be beneficial for James to take some time off—Monday’s game fell during a back-to-back—his recent slump is not the sole contributor to the Lakers’ offensive challenges. Star big man Anthony Davis struggled as well, shooting just 4-of-14 in the loss to the Timberwolves. He pointed to “bad” spacing and described the team’s overall performance as “disgusting.” James echoed this sentiment, referring to the current state of L.A.’s offense as “nasty right now,” according to McMenamin.
“I’ve not seen us play the way we played earlier in the year,” Redick observed. “I mean, I’ve got to spend all day (Tuesday) with my staff trying to figure out how we get back to that.”
As highlighted by Jovan Buha of The Athletic, while the Lakers’ defense—which started the season near the bottom of the league—has shown some recent improvement, this defensive progress has not made up for their drop in offensive efficiency.
“I really believe we’ve gotten better defensively,” Redick noted. “And I think we’ve spent a lot of time as a staff defensively. And this is the nature of the NBA season. You don’t have a ton of time. The things you emphasize, hopefully, you get better at. And sometimes when you don’t emphasize something, or you don’t work on something because you don’t necessarily have time, or you think you’re good at it and you think you have buy-in at it, you just get slippage. We gotta clean that up.”
Currently, the Lakers have a solid 12-9 record, positioning them at No. 8 in a highly competitive Western Conference, with only a 1.5-game advantage over the No. 11 Timberwolves. Considering the likelihood of a closely contested playoff race this season, how does James, who will be celebrating his 40th birthday later this month, feel about possibly adjusting his goal of playing in every game?
“That’s a goal, but, we’ll see,” James mentioned, according to McMenamin. “It’s something I ain’t discussing right now.”
Image Source: LeBron James @ Instagram
