Lakers newsletter: The in-season tournament and LeBron James have been the perfect couple

LAS VEGAS —  Hey everyone, I’m Dan Woike and welcome to a sinful Las Vegas edition of the Lakers newsletter, a place where we always split aces and always hit on 16 against face cards.

Let’s get right to it.

The right man at the right time

LeBron James made a rare admission.

“I don’t know,” he said.

For the guy with the meme-able memory and seemingly all of the answers, when James was asked during training camp if players would actually be excited about the NBA’s first in-season tournament, James kinda shrugged.

“We’ll have to see once we get to that point, obviously,” he said in early October. “I don’t want to think too far ahead, obviously. We got so much work to do here.”

Fast forward to Wednesday, with the Lakers arriving in Las Vegas a day ahead of their semifinal game with New Orleans, and any of the concerns about whether players would “care” or not about this experiment seems just silly. It’s been a wild success to date — the competition, the energy and the ratings all lapping what regular late fall basketball has looked like in the NBA.

James, the NBA’s biggest star, has become the tournament’s perfect spokesperson — an aging star fighting like hell for the championship that’s in front of him. The tournament and the player have been a perfect fit.

“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, and it seems like it’s going really well,” James told reporters in Vegas on Wednesday. “Listen, Adam Silver is a genius, so it’s that simple. So it’s going to work.”

There was plenty of skepticism, even within the league office. Officials evangelized for the tournament, they tried to explain the methodology and educate anyone who would listen as to how it would work and why it would need to.

That mattered — the messaging from the commercials to the unmistakable uniform and court designs made it clear that the in-season tournament games were different than anything the NBA had ever tried.

But James’ performances — 26.2 points, 8.0 rebounds, 8.2 assists and 1.8 steals in tournament games — have legitimized the tournament more than any conference call or stump speech could’ve.

The game’s stars, in general, have played incredibly well in these games — Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic all have had monster numbers.

But none of them are playing with a clock ticking as fast as the one James is dealing with.

He recently became the player who has logged the most minutes in NBA history when you combine the regular and postseasons. Injuries have eaten up significant chunks of four of his last five seasons. The Western Conference has only gotten tighter, meaning another crack at the big championship is far from guaranteed.

And the Lakers’ chances for that can’t be realized for months — an eternity in pro sports, where a single step can change a team’s fortunes every moment of every game.

This title, this championship is in front of them, now clearly in sight with the team in Las Vegas. The Lakers have openly lusted at the prize money. It turns out that $500,000 means a lot to millionaires and James, a billionaire.

But as James flew around the court Tuesday, quicker to the ball than players a decade younger, it was impossible that financial greed was the primary driver.

“I’ll give myself an opportunity to just, I guess, surprise myself still with what I’m able to do for as long as I’ve been in this league and for as many miles as I’ve put on these tires,” James said after the Lakers beat the Suns. “So, I want to continue to defy the odds, continue to have this battle with Father Time that for so long has, everybody said has, been undefeated. So, I’m trying to give him one loss.”

That’s a battle he’s going to eventually lose. The NBA Cup, though, is a title there’s still time to win.

And James has been set on it.

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The Killers – “All These Things That I’ve Done”

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