The Los Angeles Lakers appeared dead in the water on April 5. They’d just lost to a tanking Dallas Mavericks team despite LeBron James coming one rebound shy of a 30-point triple-double. With Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves out with injuries that, at the time, appeared likely to keep them out longer than the Lakers were expected to last in the postseason, the onus fell entirely on the 41-year-old James to keep the team afloat.
If he couldn’t do it against the Mavericks, well, the odds that he’d be able to do it against a playoff opponent didn’t look promising. When asked what the Lakers would need out of him in order to survive, James responded, simply, “everything.” He delivered that and then some in Friday night’s miraculous 112-108 overtime victory over the Houston Rockets that put the Lakers up 3-0 in the first-round series.
If we rewind nearly three weeks ago to when he said that, we had a reasonable idea of what “everything” might entail. James outlined it himself. “Nothing changes for me,” James added after that initial, single-word response. “Just back to the old ways.”
We’ve seen him singlehandedly lift lesser rosters through postseasons before. He once scored 29 of his team’s last 30 points in an Eastern Conference Finals game. He played all 48 minutes and scored or assisted on two-thirds of his team’s points in another conference finals clincher. We’re talking about someone who once averaged a 33-point triple-double in the Finals.
James has performed plenty of basketball miracles. The Lakers seemingly needed four more to make it through the first round against the Rockets. Four more games in which James contributed in every imaginable way. Four more games in which less was needed out of his supporting cast because his team had the one player in the history of basketball who really could do everything.
The first two games of the Lakers vs. Rockets series were a bit more subdued. James was excellent, but he was reserved. He monitored his energy output cautiously, hitting the gas only when necessary. Luke Kennard’s shot was hotter than the surface of the sun. Marcus Smart made every winning play. James was the conductor, but the first two victories belonged to the entire orchestra. Everyone played their part in Game 3. Smart was spectacular again, and so was Rui Hachimura. Even Bronny James had the most significant performance of his NBA career as Lakers coach JJ Redick trusted him enough to play fourth-quarter minutes.
But in a long lineage of historic playoff performances, this one is going to stand out for the elder James. Even if everyone chipped in, this was his “everything” game, even if it didn’t quite come in the manner we imagined. The stat line would look remarkable attached to any other name: 29 points, 13 rebounds, six assists and three steals. It’s probably only above average by LeBron’s lofty standards. This wasn’t the “everything” game because James did everything. It was the “everything” game because he gave everything.
We’re used to James feeling superhuman, and there were indeed moments that felt superhuman, like the alley-oop dunk from Smart and the game-tying steal and 3-pointer. But there were vulnerabilities too, and they didn’t just show up on the stat sheet as his eight turnovers did.
Two of those turnovers came in the final minute. On the first, James was so visibly exhausted that Alperen Sengun managed to zoom right past him as the trailer, catch a pass from Reed Sheppard on the run and extend the Houston lead to four with a layup with 49.6 seconds to play.
On the second, James made an earnest attempt at a play we’ve seen him make so many times — a chase-down transition block on Sengun. He couldn’t close the gap. He couldn’t get enough air on his jump to meaningfully contest a center 18 years his junior.
That’s what will ultimately make this game feel so memorable. James felt mortal. He felt every one of his 41 years as he competed not just with the Rockets, but with Father Time. He didn’t get the sports movie ending. He missed his buzzer-beating attempt to win the game in regulation. It was the sort of gritty rock fight the Rockets specialize in. James felt every minute of it and came through anyway.
That comes across in the box score. The Lakers don’t win this game without every point James scored or created. But the defining moment came with around a minute and a half left on the clock in overtime. Sheppard attempted a transition layup and missed. James flew in from the wing to attempt a rebound. He grabbed it, but as he was falling out of bounds, he had to fling the ball back into play before he careened into a cameraman. He immediately picked himself up, got back into the play, stripped Sengun, and dove back onto the ground to try to secure possession. Eventually, a jump-ball was called.
James lined up for the jump-ball against Jabari Smith Jr., a player whose father lined up against him in his NBA debut all the way back in 2003. It was a fitting moment in a game in which James threw an alley-oop to his own son, and a gassed James managed to win possession despite barely jumping. All he seemingly had left was a brief hop.
The Lakers weren’t surprised. “That motherf*****’s been in this 23 years, right?” Smart joked after the game. “We know he’s gonna come up with that ball.”
You’ll see all of the records that inevitably come with a game like this at his age. He became the oldest player in NBA history to lead his team in scoring in a playoff game, breaking the record he set three days earlier. The game-tying 3-pointer will live in his playoff highlight reel forever, and the steal that led to it is an eternal testament to his situational awareness against a less seasoned opponent. The numbers, the big moments, they speak for themselves, and they fall into a nearly never-ending pile. We weren’t exactly short on legendary LeBron James playoff games.
But as we draw closer to the end of the greatest overall career in the history of the sport, there’s something special about the sort of game that could only come at this specific point. It was less an incredible James playoff game than it was an incredible old James playoff game, a somewhat unique position in his archives. We’re so used to James feeling inevitable that seeing him win when he isn’t is a different sort of satisfying, and perhaps a more relatable one for those of us not blessed with the one-of-a-kind physical gifts James has enjoyed for most of his career.
This was a basketball genius summoning every last ounce of basketball left in his body to take down a younger, fresher opponent, and after more than two decades of superheroics, it’s just a different flavor of excellence.
He promised the Lakers everything, and he delivered.
