The Los Angeles Lakers’ season came to an end at the hands of the defending NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder in a second-round sweep. Despite being without Luka Doncic, the Lakers gave the Thunder a fight with LeBron James leading the way and Austin Reaves coming back from injury to contribute anything he could.
In general, being swept out of the playoffs is a tough way to end the season and, for the most part, any season not ending in a championship is a disappointment by Lakers standards. But James doesn’t view things that way as he felt the Lakers maximized themselves, but simply didn’t have enough talent to keep up with the Thunder.
“I understand that. You get caught up in ring culture and things of that nature,” James said on the latest edition of his “Mind the Game” podcast. “But at the end of the day there’s 29 teams, if that’s the case, who are all failures if that’s always the narrative. Because there’s only one champion every year. I have the passion and the admiration to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy up every single year. But I also have a realization of what particular team I have been a part of in that particular year.
“And understanding this year, we fought and we played to the maximum ability of our team, but ultimately, if we’re being completely honest, we were out-talented. We were not outworked. They didn’t out-physical us. They didn’t outsmart us. I felt like we were just out-talented by OKC. They just possessed so much more talent and yea they might have had a couple more possessions where some IQ can kick in but that happens throughout the course of the game, that goes for both teams.
“I feel like there’s times where we had moments where we out-IQ’d them. But at the end of the day we failed in talent. OKC just possessed so much more talent than us. You can tip your cap to them obviously and understand that. But yeah, you can’t get caught up in that especially when you know you’re undermanned for sure.”
Even with a healthy Doncic, it would’ve been a very difficult task to take down the Thunder. But without him it was basically impossible. To their credit, the Lakers never gave up and kept fighting every contest, holding leads in the second half of each of the last three games. They even held back-to-back MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to 22 points or less in each of the first three games of the series.
But James is right in that L.A. just didn’t have enough talent to keep up. Players such as Ajay Mitchell, Jared McCain and Cason Wallace played huge roles in the Thunder coming out on top and, even though the Lakers fought as hard as they could, sometimes that isn’t enough.
LeBron James discusses thought process & timeline heading into free agency
Now that this season is over for James, everyone is wondering whether he will continue his career and, if so, who will he play for as he is an unrestricted free agent. The Lakers’ superstar recently discussed his thought process going into the offseason as well as a rough timeline on when he expects to make his decision.
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