JAMES IS THE CHANGE FANS WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD
Lakers are winning most of the games they should win and learning as they go, writes Scott Cacciola
The Los Angeles Lakers are not a great team, but they employ the greatest player in the world. They seem to be grasping the potential benefits of such an arrangement. LeBron James can compensate for many problems: lacklustre defence, questionable decisions, growing pains.
“He comes out and plays the game pure,” coach Luke Walton said.
On Wednesday night, the difference between his presence (on the Lakers) and his absence (from the Cavaliers) was clear in his return to Cleveland, where fans came to Quicken Loans Arena to pay their respects to a bygone era — the LeBron Era. Without him, the Cavaliers are a bad team, one of the worst in the league. James feels for them.
“A lot of the guys have worked their tails off to get to where they are in their career,” James said after the Lakers escaped with a 109-105 victory, “and you never want to see your friends be in the situation that they’re in. But as professionals, they’re still giving it all they got.”
After decamping to Los Angeles in free agency over the summer, James belongs to the Lakers now — or perhaps they belong to him. They are not championship contenders, not yet anyway, but they are winning most of the games they should win and learning as they go.
“It’s happening,” Walton said, “and it’s good to see it happening, but it’s still the early stages of where we ultimately need to get to.”
Their win against the Cavaliers was the latest example, a flawed effort that James mended by collecting 32 points, 14 rebounds and 7 assists. The Lakers, who improved to 10-7, have won six of their last seven games. Their progress was on display in front of James’ old fans and teammates and coaches, who are familiar with his ability to elevate those around him.
“He’s done this everywhere he’s gone,” Cavaliers coach Larry Drew said. “He’s such a dominant force.”
The game — billed as a homecoming — was free of the vitriol that was directed towards James in 2010, when he made his first trip back to Cleveland as a freshly minted member of the Miami Heat. Back then, James and his teammates actually feared for their safety. Skirmishes broke out in the stands. James scored 38 points in a lopsided win.
On Wednesday, the crowd was appreciative, offering him a warm welcome, albeit one tinged with sadness. No one booed. No one threw anything. People just missed him.
Jay Ventura, 23, and Natalie Miller, 20, college students from Akron, Ohio, James’ hometown, bought tickets for the game over the summer, when they first became available. They wore James jerseys that were half Lakers and half Cavaliers, homemade homages to their favourite player.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” Ventura said, “but it’s different now. He did everything he said he was going to do for us, you know? He delivered his promise.”
That promise was fulfilled in 2016: a championship, the Cavaliers’ first and only. Clips of their title run were included in a video montage that the team played during the first timeout of Wednesday’s game, not long after a reminder that fans were entitled to free chicken nuggets if the Cavaliers scored at least 100 points. (Not all was lost in the end.)
In any case, James was touched by the gesture. He saw only part of the montage — Walton, he said, was drawing up a play in the huddle, and James did not want to mess it up — but he raised his arms to acknowledge the crowd after the timeout and clasped his hands together in a sign of gratitude.
“I appreciate these fans,” he said, “just as much as they appreciate me.”
The Lakers are improving by the week. Forgotten is their early-season brawl with the Houston Rockets. Fading are James’ woes from the freethrow line, though they remain a bit of an issue. It seems almost quaint to recall that team president Magic Johnson chastised Walton when the Lakers stumbled to a 3-5 start.
Little about their season has been particularly easy, and after surviving suspensions stemming from the aforementioned brawl, the Lakers are adjusting to life without point guard Rajon Rondo, who broke his hand last week. Adding veteran centre Tyson Chandler has helped, because he is a respected voice in the locker room and a fierce defender.
But the Lakers are inexperienced, and Chandler cited the importance of young players like Kyle Kuzma and Lonzo Ball as the team moves forward.
“All of these games are good because we’re so young,” Chandler said. “The core of our team and what’s going to be the deciding factor is our youth, our young players: Kuz, Lonzo, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart. They’re going to decide down the stretch what our season is going to really be like. It’s going to be the development of them.”
It helps, of course, that the Lakers have the ultimate mentor in James, whose brand of tough love can travel a fine line between abrasive and effective. But he has vowed to exercise patience this season, and Walton has been careful to highlight the players who are toiling in James’ shadow.
After Wednesday’s game, for example, Walton praised the play of Ball, the team’s starting point guard, who finished with 15 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.
“I loved it,” Walton said. “It was one of my favourite parts of our game — how much he was attacking the rim, even the ones he didn’t finish. I didn’t care. Just seeing him get downhill and be physical and play-make, he’s so gifted with that. To see him kind of take that next step was really a positive for us.”
In the locker room, James joined his teammates for a postgame meal that included hamburgers from Swensons, a chain that originated in Akron.
“We grew up on these things,” said Randy Mims, James’ childhood friend and longtime confidant.
James dressed in a T-shirt that read, “All Good Never Better,” before leaving the arena for the airport and a long flight home.