The Lakers, catastrophic calamity

It’s impossible not to look at LeBron James, who hit the (?penultimate?) I bite into that race, against history and logic, which is about to culminate, before our eyes. Another 27 points, 30.1 on average in the season in which he turned 38 and 20 in the NBA, and now only 36 to stack up to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The count is now 38,387 times 38,352. Just 36 more points and LeBron will be the player with the most points in history. He will put his name on one of those marks that seemed untouchable, gold standard. What was (is, for a few more days) of Kareem since 1984, a few months before LeBron himself was born. After a five-game road trip, the Lakers return to LA and, with ticket prices skyrocketing (smells like live history) they will play the Thunder on Tuesday and the Bucks on Thursday. If nothing unusual happens, during the european morning on Friday (04:00 Spanish time both games) LeBron will surely be the top scorer in NBA history. If you hurry a little, it could be already before we have breakfast in Spain on Wednesday. From then on, there will only be one account: How far can you take your numbers, where will you leave your record, and how impossible? it will be to beat him when he retires. Probably, like Kareem, his successor hasn’t even been born yet.

It is impossible not to look at the market. Kyrie Irving’s transfer request has created an earthquake in whose shock wave the Lakers dance, the vaunted favorite destination of a player in whose coconut It is impossible to trust (not without trembling) at this point but whose talent will always give him an extra life. The Lakers are looking for a coup de effect, something that saves them from themselves and their permanent errors in the offices during the last two seasons. Kyrie is the double somersault, the American miracle or damnation (very nearly) eternal. The thing is so hot that LeBron, after the game against the Pelicans (in which he scored those 27 points) put strange face when asked if Kyrie could bring them closer to the level of ring contenders. It will be because he won one with the point guard, in 2016. And he came to say that questions like that to Rob Pelinka, the big shot of the offices with which he does not get along very well right now. To the wise… But, because such a talent always gives extra lives, other suitors move: We already know that the Clippers are on it, it seems that the Mavericks are thinking about it, the Suns have material with which to negotiate. There may not be anyone as desperate as the Lakers, but there may be someone faster. And if Kyrie goes elsewhere, it will sound like a failure for the Angelenos (the ones in purple and gold, at least) regardless of how it ends, that’s another, this (it seems imminent) new experiment for a player so difficult to predict and, in many of his behaviors, so hard to bear.

But, in the midst of all that, it was impossible not to also look at New Orleans, where the Lakers consummated a seemingly major disaster. It’s easy: on the day they had to win, they lost. Beyond historical records and castles in the exhausting air of the market, the Lakers lost a key game, a crossroads, against those Pelicans to whom they have been so closely linked since the transfer of Anthony Davis: 131-126. They lost against a rival who had lost ten games in a row and whom, precisely because of this, they could have overtaken in the race for play-in from West. They lost although they dominated for more than half the game with some clarity. They lost because they took 70 points in the second half from a team that was in a tremendous offensive crisis until, what a coincidence, tonight. They lost despite the fact that Zion Williamson was not in front and, when the moment of truth arrived, neither was Jonas Valanciunas, who left the game in the third quarter due to a knee injury. They lost because, for the umpteenth time, they let the result be decided in the final moments and there, also for the umpteenth time, they had no energy to attack and no idea how to defend. They lost because it doesn’t seem like life is going for them when it is. And because Darvin Ham seems less and less capable of managing a rotation that is already very poor with sense, judgment and reflexes. Ham, shielded by the chaos that surrounds him, begins to seem more like a concern than a solution to the Lakers’ problems. Which are many.

Ham gifted minuscule defenders like Patrick Beverley to a Brandon Ingram who still hadn’t picked up a rhythm after coming back from his long and ugly injury. The forward was grateful for the gift: 35 points and the decisive dribble as the Lakers visibly ran out of steam after letting a game slip away that they had tamed into the third quarter (72-84). With everything going for it and an obvious need to win, lost. Davis spoke after the urgency is at maximum and that what needs to be done, needs to be done now. But he is wrong: it should have been done alreadyat least tonight. Now it’s 25-29 to the Pelicans’ 27-27, saved from themselves by a frighteningly incapable rival. and pushed to the end by their greater cohesion and a freshness of spirit that did not appear in a dull, clueless and, of course, poorly trained Lakers. Some to whom a very low-profile West continues to give opportunities that they surely don’t even deserve. Opportunities that, perhaps for that very reason, continue to be misused in a pitiful way.

Victories for Clippers, Thunder, Suns…

To add insult to injury, The night was bad for the Lakers, who cannot live waiting for the slips of others to continue giving them batteries for their calculator. The Clippers, who according to information on Saturday night are going strong for Kyrie Irving, they won at Madison Squaren Garden (128-134) and remain at 30-26, already four games ahead of the Lakers. Where the latter were condemned, the neighbor was able to save: after losing a 17-point lead in the last quarter (from 81-98 to 115-112) a rebound from Ivica Zubac with three seconds left allowed Nicolas Batum to tie with a triple. Later, the Knicks ran out of steam in overtime in a duel in which Jalen Brunson (41 points, 7 assists) finally weighed less than Paul George (30, 8 rebounds, 5 assists) and Kawhi Leonard (35, 5 and 4 robberies).

The Suns, for their part, won in Detroit (100-116) against the impoverished Pistons and are 29-26, pushed by Deandre Ayton (31 points, 16 rebounds) and Mikal Bridges (24) as they await Devin Booker’s return. The Thunder did not suffer either (153-121) against the Rockets, the worst team of the season, and they are placed 24-27, also ahead of some Lakers who at least saw as the Blazers (26-27 now) lost, overwhelmed by the attack of the Bulls in the second half (129-121). Damian Lillard finished with 40 points and 5 assists, and it seemed for a good stretch of the game that his silk percussion would once again be enough for those from Oregon. But everything changed in the third quarter (33-17), when the Bulls began to make all the shots that had been missing until then. The third quarter ended with a 29-7 run that took a 17-point lead from the Blazers (63-80) ahead with just over a quarter and a half to go in the game.