If This Is It, WCF Exit Did Nothing to Tarnish LeBron James' Legacy
With four seconds left in the fourth quarter of Monday's Game 4 between the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James caught the ball at the top of the key and drove left on Aaron Gordon. Thanks in part to a brief tie-up by a helping Jamal Murray, Gordon blocked a LeBron attempt just outside the paint, and the buzzer sounded on L.A.'s 2022-23 campaign—and possibly LeBron's legendary career.
According to Bleacher Report's Chris Haynes, following a sweep at the hands of the Nuggets, James is considering retirement.
In the 113-111 loss in Game 4, LeBron had 10 rebounds, nine assists and 40 points. But he needed at least 42.
And now, it's time for the reactions, especially with news of a possible departure breaking after the game.
Some may attempt to use this series as a way to diminish LeBron's legacy. They might even go further back in his time with L.A.
He won a championship with the Lakers in 2020. They beat the Nuggets in the conference finals that year. But he missed the playoffs entirely the year before that (his first with the Lakers). He was knocked out in the first round in 2021. And he missed the postseason again in 2022. Over his five regular seasons with this franchise, he's averaged just 55.6 games per year.
The teams the Lakers knocked off during this playoff run were the Memphis Grizzlies without Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke, as well the Golden State Warriors, a team that's seemingly been fraying since Draymond Green punched Jordan Poole during a pre-season practice.
If you really want to nitpick LeBron's time with the Lakers, those are some points you can start with.
But let's be real: LeBron's basketball legacy is safe. He could walk away tomorrow and still have a real "greatest of all time argument." If anything, even after it ended in a sweep, this postseason run probably helped the legacy.
He's 38 years and 144 days old as of this writing. He just dropped 40 points in a conference finals game. The previous high for a player his age (or older) in a playoff game was the 34 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored on May 6, 1986 against the Dallas Mavericks.
He led a seventh seed past Ja Morant and the No. 2 Grizzlies. Sure, Memphis had some injuries, but L.A. had its own adversity during that series. For one thing, much of the roster had been turned over just ahead of the trade deadline. It takes time to develop chemistry, and LeBron helped the Lakers do that on the fly.
He missed a lot of time toward the end of the regular season with a foot injury, but his willingness to defer to the playmaking of D'Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves in the first round was crucial to winning that series.
In the second round, he averaged 24.7 points and 5.5 assists (both team highs). He added 8.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks and shot 49.5 percent from the field. And yes, Steve Kerr admitted that the Green-Poole incident cost his team some trust, but that was still the defending champs. And LeBron beat them in six games. Without home-court advantage.
To start the season 2-10, remake the roster on the fly in January and February and end up in the conference finals with a 38-year-old leader is remarkable. Whatever happened after that would've been gravy.
It just so happens that they didn't win another game after the second round. But that shouldn't necessarily be shocking. The idea that these particular Lakers were a real contender against the Nuggets was manufactured.
L.A. was the seventh seed. Denver was first in the West for the majority of the season, and it features a two-time MVP who's seemingly passing some Wilt Chamberlain-held record every other week.
This group has only been together for a few months, and much of the media expected it to be able to take down a borderline juggernaut.
That was almost certainly never going to happen.
The story should be the absurd performance of a near-40-year-old superstar against a team he said was perhaps the best he's faced during the Lakers' LeBron-AD era.
In these four games against the Nuggets, LeBron averaged 27.8 points, 10.0 assists, 9.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals. A near triple-double over four games against the best team in the West.
In the first half of Game 4 alone, he dropped 31 points and led his underdog Lakers to a 15-point lead by the end of the second quarter. He was 11-of-13 from the field and 4-of-4 from three. Seemingly no one from Denver could keep him away from the rim.
"That first half was vintage LeBron James," Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after the game. "He understood what time it was, with their team firmly back against the wall. In that first half, he showed he's one of the all-time great players."
That's the legacy takeaway from this series. He entered as one of the all-time greats. And he left every bit as much an all-time great as he was a week ago.
