The Los Angeles Lakers will not play another game until October,
but LeBron James is apparently not ready to stop dunking. Fresh off the maiden
first-round playoff exit of his career, James responded to a cresting wave of
injuries to marquee stars with a social media scolding of the NBA.
اضافة اعلان
It followed a sobering bulletin about the Los Angeles Clippers’
Kawhi Leonard, who is out indefinitely after spraining his knee in the
Clippers’ second-round series against the Utah Jazz. James took to Twitter to
commiserate with fans about the record-setting eight current All-Stars who have
missed at least one game this postseason. He also criticized league officials
for not doing more in this pandemic season to “protect the well being of the
players.”
By more he meant less: James said he warned them of the injury
risks in wedging a 72-game regular season between Dec. 22 and May 16, with the
playoffs timed to end right before the Tokyo Olympics, compared with starting
in mid-January and possibly playing fewer games. The 2019-20 season, remember,
strayed into October and spawned the shortest offseason in league history after
a four-month interruption because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the
season,” James wrote. “I knew exactly what would happen.”
Self-serving? Yes. Vague? Yes again. There was an undeniable
whiff of convenience to James’ remarks, as a rationalization for the swift end
to the Lakers’ title defense, along with a lack of clarity. James did not
specify who was warned, or when or where. He was also surely aware that the
league and the players’ union agreed on the 2020-21 season schedule and that
starting later, as James had hoped, likely would have cost both parties
significant television revenue.
Yet the soliloquy, above all, amounted to a loud and powerful
“told you so” from James that drowned out the disclaimers. It carried more bite
than his recent blasts about staging an All-Star Game in Atlanta in March, and
protests against the playoff play-in tournament that his Lakers, after
long-term injuries felled both James and Anthony Davis, had to win to make the
playoffs after slipping to seventh place in the West.
Beyond the uncomfortable spotlight he brought to a dampened NBA
postseason increasingly defined by who isn’t able to play, James said what so
many of his fellow players have surely been thinking — using his
biggest-in-the-game megaphone. The outburst highlighted a prime concern in
front offices and among medical staffs throughout the league: What cost,
present and future, did the stacking of two pandemic seasons with such a short
turnaround impose?
The players’ union agreed to that timeline after learning that
the NBA’s television partners pushed for it. The players, who split annual basketball-related
income almost evenly with team owners, were told that starting in January
instead of December would cost roughly $500 million in revenue, after last
season’s shortfall of $1.5 billion. No less important to the league office was
the opportunity to wrap this season up in time to return to its usual
October-through-June arc in 2021-22.
In retrospect? It was a giant ask. The physical and mental toll
of last season’s restart in the Florida bubble, combined so soon with the
rigors of a season in home markets governed by strict COVID-19 protocols, had
teams fearing a spate of soft-tissue injuries. Daily coronavirus testing cut
into rest and recovery time. Player stress and training time lost, with fewer
practices and a second-half crush of games to make up for earlier virus-related
postponements, only increased those fears.
As the number of injuries to stars — because of bad luck or the
compressed schedule — became a dominant second-half story line, questions
surfaced. One of the biggest: How will the franchise cornerstones who shoulder
such demanding loads rebound next season?
“I don’t know if people do get the question you asked,”
Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers told me. “There’s so much stress on those
guys. Some guys log heavier minutes — they have to do more.”
Rivers’ All-Star center, Joel Embiid, is one of those guys.
Embiid has been playing through a small meniscus tear in his right knee. After
a roaring start to Philadelphia’s second-round series against Atlanta, he was
unable to prevent the top-seeded Sixers from falling into a 3-2 series deficit
entering a Game 6 on the road.
Those eight All-Stars who have missed at least one playoff game
include Embiid. The number will swell to nine if Phoenix’s Chris Paul, who this
week entered the league’s health and safety protocols, has to miss any of the
upcoming Western Conference finals.
As I’ve been writing since April, there is little charm to be
celebrated from the uncharacteristically wide-open nature of these playoffs
when the suspense largely stems from game- and series-changing absences.
Kevin Durant uncorked a performance for the ages (49 points in
48 minutes) on Tuesday to haul the Brooklyn Nets to the brink of the Eastern
Conference finals despite Kyrie Irving’s absence with a sprained ankle and
James Harden’s limited effectiveness on a strained right hamstring. On
Wednesday, Atlanta’s Trae Young starred in a remarkable Game 5 comeback against
the 76ers — or, depending on your perspective, Philadelphia’s unfathomable
fold. Then the Leonard-less Clippers beat top-seeded Utah in Game 5 on the
strength of a dominant showing by Paul George.
These are the things we should be dissecting.
Over and over, sadly, injuries have changed the conversation.
They affect every season, true, but the intrusions have seemingly been a
constant since March 20, when James (high ankle sprain after Atlanta’s Solomon
Hill collided with him) and Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball (fractured wrist after
crashing to the floor) were hurt on the same day. Ball’s injury threatened his
surging campaign for the Rookie of the Year Award, but after missing 21 games,
he returned for the final 10 and received the honor on Wednesday.
Elias circulated last week that this season’s 27 All-Stars
combined to miss a higher rate of games (13.7 games per player and 19 percent
overall) than in any previous season. Michele Roberts, the executive director
of the players’ union, declined to comment on Wednesday when asked if James had
raised his concerns about such developments in consultation with union
officials before the season.
“I speak for the health of all our players and I hate to see
this many injuries this time of the year,” James said as part of his
rim-shaking social media post.
On this occasion, and this topic, they were comments heard — and
felt — by an entire league.
Read more
Sports
.jpg)
.jpg)
