Last night’s Los Angeles Lakers 115-99 loss was a special one for LeBron James in particular. James led all scorers with 31 points to go along with 7 rebounds and 7 assists. The game was meaning for The King because he surpassed his childhood idol, Michael Jordan, to take 4th place in the NBA all-time scoring list.
After scoring the basket that took him into 4th place, James was visible emotional. James sported a towel over his head to hide how emotional he really was.
“I didn’t want to show what was going on behind that towel.”
James had “Thank You MJ” written on his shoes. This ranks right up there at the top with winning a championship. For a kid from Akron, Ohio that needed inspiration, that needed some type of positive influence, MJ was that guy for me.”
James first met Jordan when he was 15 and describes it as meeting a God.
“I never thought I was going to meet him.”
Lakers coach called this achievement special because he views LBJ as a pass first guy and James agreed.
“I’ve always been a pass-first guy. Since I started playing the game of basketball. I was always taught by my little league coach and father figure, Frank Walker, he always said it’s a lot more thrill from seeing your teammates succeed. I always taught to play the game the right way. “
James continually said this accolade is crazy. This is crazy because that’s all me and my best friends talked about growing up, was MJ.
James admits he always wanted to be like Michael and ever since he started to play basketball. He wore number 23 at the first opportunity in his second season playing.
“You guys have no idea what MJ did for me and my friends and I’m trying to give it to you guys but you but you have no idea. Some days you don’t feel like you’re going to make it to the next day where I grew up because of everything that’s going on. Like I wrote on my shoes tonight, I thank MJ more than he would ever know. I gotta carry it on to the next kid, hopefully, I can inspire the next kid like myself.”
The comparisons of James and Jordan have been long debated since James begun his career. Air Jordan played 15 years while this year is James’ 16th season. James has 3 championship rings. Back-to-back years with The Miami Heat in 2012 & 2013 and then a 7 game upset victory of The Golden State Warriors in 2016 with The Cleveland Cavaliers. Jordan has 6 titles all with The Chicago Bulls. LBJ has 4 MVPs titles, while Jordan had 5. Both have similar numbers separated by only defensive accomplishments. Jordan led the league in steals on 3 different occasions. MJ has 10 scoring titles to LeBon’s 1. Jordan has been All-Defensive first team 9 times, in comparison to James’ 5. However, you could also debate that King James is a better rebounder (more than 2,000 more than Jordan) and a better distributor (nearly 3000 more than MJ). Jordan left shoot just under 50 per cent while James is currently shooting over 50 per cent and doing it by putting up more than half the average amount of 3 point shots that Jordan would take. Nevertheless, great players in their respected eras but with the game changing the way it has, it makes it even harder to debate.
James left the game with 32,311 points and his next scoring list accolade will include former Laker great Kobe Bryant who sits with 33,643 points. Karl Malone’s 36,928 points and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 sit at 2 and 1 respectively.
With only 17 games left to play the Lakers sit 6 and a half games behind the 8th seeded LA Clippers for the final spot in the NBA playoffs.
The Lakers are back in action on Saturday when they welcome the Boston Celtics to The Staples Centre at 8:30 pm.
