Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James returned to the lineup in the win over the Utah Jazz, and the team scored a season-high 140 points as a result.
While James was a bit rusty at the start, he got into a groove in the second half by finding his teammates for easy buckets. The 40-year-old only had 11 points on 4-of-7 shooting in 30 minutes but also contributed 12 assists.
A few of those were to Deandre Ayton, who has been getting easy buckets all season thanks to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, and now LeBron.
After the win, Ayton talked about James’ passing and how easy it makes the game for him.
“Yeah because I’m telling everybody, some of these passes I didn’t know he seen me cut,” Ayton said. “Just being at the right place at the right time, he’s finding me right away with sharp passes. He’s making life easy. I told Bron, I said good, those are easy buckets right there. I just got in the game and that’s what we were laughing about.”
Ayton caught an alley-oop from James, but it apparently wasn’t the first time that’s happened.
“He don’t make it seem like that,” Ayton said of LeBron being in his 23rd season. “Running next to him, he runs as fast as me down the floor. You don’t think that it’s his 23rd year. The dude’s a machine. I was just telling him a fun fact. When he threw me an alley-oop, I said that’s my second alley-oop from you. The first one was when I was in eighth grade at your camp. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. It was fun.”
And there is video proof of Ayton at James’ camp in 2014:
What a fun story from Deandre. Time flies. https://t.co/XlZqyXlvJC pic.twitter.com/uYCAxIsr5T
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) November 19, 2025
When Ayton told LeBron about this, the 40-year-old couldn’t help but laugh.
“He laughed. He asked where it was and I was telling him it was the LeBron James Camp in Las Vegas,” Ayton said. “I remember the play and everything. He was court hopping and playing with the campers and I remember the one play of him in the drill with me and he threw the alley-oop and I finished it. I couldn’t believe he threw it. And here I am in the NBA, can’t believe he threw that lob.”
James has been in the league so long that Ayton surely isn’t the only player he threw a lob to at one of his camps over the years. The superstar is still doing it though, and this team has a lot of potential now that James is back in the lineup getting easy looks for Ayton and his other teammates.
LeBron James discusses how he felt in Lakers season debut
LeBron James missed the Lakers’ first 14 games due to a sciatica issue, but he felt good after getting his wind in his season debut.
“Wind was a little shaky to begin,” James said. “Obviously, that was expected. As the game went on and on, my wind got a lot better, caught my second wind and caught my third wind. [My] rhythm is still coming back, obviously first game in quite a while almost seven months, so everything that happened tonight was unexpected. I think the pace versus a team like Utah, who play with a lot of pace, a lot of movement, a lot of cutting and things of that nature, tested us and tested me, obviously. I was happy the way I was able to keep up with the guys.”
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