THERE WERE EIGHT seconds left with the score tied. LeBron James already had 36 points, 14 of them in the fourth quarter.
He got the inbounds pass under his own basket and turned upcourt, picking up speed. His defender, the Toronto Raptors’ OG Anunoby, stalked him and forced him left like the scouting report said.
James rose up, twisted in midair and took his left hand off the ball. His momentum was pulling him toward the baseline and he never got square. Anunoby reached his long arms into James’ field of vision and forced him to float the ball one-handed. As the buzzer sounded, the ball glanced off the upper left corner of the backboard like a Tim Duncan special and fell through. Game 3, and essentially the Cleveland Cavaliers’ series with the Raptors last May, was over.
It was one of the most majestic shots of James’ career. It combined so many of his traits into one moment. The speed, the size, the vision, the will, the touch, the desire all working together.
This was less than 11 months ago. It was a pillar in maybe the best individual postseason of his career, the most points he’d averaged in nine years, his most assists ever, his highest playoff PER in nine years.
Simply, the run that James put on last spring following a brilliant regular season where he finished second in MVP voting just doesn’t square with the player who is finishing the most disappointing season of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers.
It’s hard to comprehend how a player who played all 104 games that his team played last season and showed a mastery of endurance, recovery and body control could twice get hurt this season just slipping on the floor. The latest happened last week when he went down on a drive against the Brooklyn Nets and violently banged his knee following the slide on Christmas that popped his groin muscle.
