NBA Superstar LeBron James recently announced that he was stepping away from the Los Angeles Lakers amid a slump in his game. Head coach J.J. Redick announced that James was taking an “excused absence” from the team and that he needed to take time away for “personal reasons.” Redick also noted that LeBron, who is set to turn 40 this month, was also feeling “gassed.”
Statistics show that James has experienced a rough patch in his performance, going just 4 for 34 in his past 3-point attempts. “I don’t know that’s in the best interest of him and us if he does that, but if he’s feeling well and feeling good, then he should play,” Redick said after James had a season-low of 10 points in the Lakers 109-80 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. “But we obviously want to … manage that as best we can.”
James is also battling a foot injury and has asked to be taken out of some games to get some rest on the sideline. “For us, we have to be cognizant as we play more and more games, just the cumulative effect of playing a lot of minutes and Sunday, being banged up with the foot thing, it felt like a good opportunity for him to get some rest,” Redick said.
Furthermore, reports indicate that James has not fully committed to playing in every single game in the remainder of the season. “That’s a goal, but, we’ll see,” James said. “It’s something I ain’t discussing right now.” LeBron further noted that he felt “off rhythm” when asked about pain points in his game. “It’s the rhythm. I just feel off rhythm the last few, three or four games,” he said.
Redick also indicated he and his staff are trying to determine how to get the Lakers on the right track. “I’ve not seen us play the way we played earlier in the year,” he explained. “I mean, I’ve got to spend all day tomorrow with my staff trying to figure out how we get back to that.”
However, it isn’t just LeBron on the Los Angeles roster who is struggling to find their groove. Star forward Anthony Davis also had a season low in the loss to the Timberwolves, scoring 12 points when shooting 4-14 on the field. Davis said, “We got to get back into our spacing. We are kind of on top of each other when guys are trying to drive. When guys are in their spots for shooting, there’s a guy right under them. So the spacing is bad.”
Davis continued, “Sometimes we look like a team that can compete with anyone, and sometimes we look like a team that looks terrible and is not going to do anything this season. So we just got to figure out what team that we want to be for the rest of the season. I think we had games where we were phenomenal and we had games where we were disgusting like tonight.”
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