The Los Angeles Lakers had about as good of a road trip as they could ask for, going 5-1 on a six-game trip. LeBron James and Anthony Davis led the way the entire time, capping it off with a win over the Washington Wizards.
Things weren’t always great for the Lakers in Washington, especially with LeBron, Davis and the rest of the starters having to come back in late after the reserves allowed the Wizards back in the game. But on the last night of a road trip, LeBron was happy getting the win on what was a very successful trip, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Last game on an 11-day road trip, 10 days, whatever, coming off a back-to-back getting in late last night, you do whatever you need to do to take it down to win the game. It took all 48 minutes and it was a good trip for us, hell of a trip for us.”
Unfortunately for the Lakers, despite having won eight of their last nine games, they have made little ground in the Western Conference standings. They remain in the ninth seed, two losses behind the Phoenix Suns, New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings with only six games left. But LeBron insists their focus is strictly on their opponent and not things they can’t control:
“Our focus is on the next opponent, not what’s going on in the rankings. Those will be decided at the end of the season, where everybody will be at. So our next opponent is Cleveland, but we’re excited to kind of get a day off and just kind of get away from the game, I know I am. Tomorrow will be a great time to get away from the game and it will be great for us to have these two days in between games so we can kind of get our body back acclimated to the West Coast after being on the East Coast for this time period. So it’s good.”
There is still a chance for the Lakers to move up, especially with the way they’ve been playing lately. Overall, LeBron is happy with where the team is at both offensively and defensively, though he still sees areas they can improve:
“I think offensively we’ve been very consistent with our ball movement, sharing the ball. We still got to crack down on some of the unforced turnovers but we’ve all been in a good rhythm playing off one another. I think defensively we’ve been good at times, we can be a lot better at times. But when we’ve needed to get stops, we’ve got them. We got it done throughout this whole trip.”
Locking down on defense, getting out in transition and sharing the ball on offense has been the path to success for these Lakers. With LeBron and Davis leading the way, this team feels like they can compete with anyone and over the past couple months they have been doing just that.
Lakers’ LeBron James admits his time left in the NBA is ‘not very long’
In his 21st NBA season, LeBron James is obviously on the backside of his career. Even still, the Lakers star recently stated the obvious in addressing his NBA future.
After another excellent recent performance, James was asked how much longer he can play and he responded ‘not very long.’ LeBron did add that he isn’t sure what the timeframe is or when he plans on calling it a career, but it coming soon.
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