Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James put on a show against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on Sunday evening, leading his team to another victory on the road trip.
James tied a season-high with 40 points to go along with seven rebounds and five assists on a ridiculous 13-of-17 shooting and 9-of-10 from deep. The nine triples tied his career high.
At one point early in the fourth quarter, everything James was throwing up was going in, including a fadeaway, off-balanced corner 3.
After LeBron made that one, the Barclays Center crowd was on their feet cheering for him to keep shooting. This isn’t the first time that James has gotten love like that from fans on the road, and he tried to give it right back to them with his stellar play on the court, as seen on Spectrum SportsNet:
“Obviously it’s a really good feeling when you have it going and you’re winning. That’s most important for me. But the appreciation from the fans here, I just tried to give them the game back and it was very well-received and I just tried to reciprocate that by going out and playing the game that I love to play at a high level.”
James is shooting 41.6% from 3 this season on 5.3 attempts. The only other time he shot greater than 40% was 2012-13 when he shot 40.6% on 3.3 attempts. Last season was one of LeBron’s worst seasons from deep at just 32.1%, and when discussing how he has been able to improve by almost 10%, he pointed to the fact that he has been healthy and able to get on the practice court between games:
“I’ve been able to be on the floor a lot more during non-game days. My foot has felt a lot better, I didn’t have much time to really rep a lot last year because I had to make sure that I could be on the floor running around or putting much pounding on the floor for my foot. I’ve had a lot of opportunity to get on the floor (this year). You guys see me before every game out on the floor working on my game, working on my craft. So that has helped out a lot too. Just try to stay consistent with my shot. Same shot every time and just work. Work, work, work, work, work.”
James has accomplished everything there is in NBA, and even in his 21st season, he is continuing to improve as a player. Considering he wasn’t known as a 3-point shooter early in his career, James talked about when that started to become a big part of his game:
“I don’t ever have to lean on [3-pointers] because I can do so much — I can score on any level on the floor basically once I cross half court. But being able to have a growth mindset and be able to work on things that the league is changing to, the league is a heavy 3-point shooting league. I’m not one of those guys that wants to go out there and shoot 12, 14 or 15 3s per game. But I want to be respected, and teams have to play me from the outside. That’s still kind of one thing teams [think] … ‘If we have to give up something, we’d much rather him shoot the ball from the outside.'”
Between James and D’Angelo Russell, the Lakers have two of the better 3-point shooters in the league this season. Considering the importance of offense in the league today, having two snipers like that who can also score in other ways will be crucial for the Lakers going into the playoffs.
LeBron James: Lakers cannot overlook under .500 teams on road trip
Before the game against the Nets, LeBron James cautioned to the Lakers that they cannot overlook the under .500 teams coming up on their schedule.
The Lakers responded well against Brooklyn, jumping out to a 15-0 lead and never looking back with James of course playing a major role in that with his 40 points.
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