I HAVE always been a Los Angeles Lakers fan. From Jerry West to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, from Magic Johnson to Kobe Bryant—they are Laker greats close to my heart like they are my own childhood chums. They’ve all become legends of the game, icons to be venerated like demigods, holders of legacies that generations look up to till the end of time.
And now LeBron James.
He is 38 already but look at him play. His swagger hides his age. He still zooms like a 28-year-old stud. He can still bulldoze his way to the hoop anytime he wants to—even as he has already become, just very recently, No. 1 in most total points scored in National Basketball Association (NBA) history. In so doing, James has erased Jabbar’s record of 38,387 points of nearly 39 years. James scored his record-shattering 38,388th point on a fadeaway against Oklahoma with 10.9 seconds left in the third quarter on February 7, 2023.
Apart from being the Lakers’ undisputed leader, James has remained the team’s leading light, the squad’s unmistakable heart and soul. Where James goes, the Lakers go. And, almost always, they all soar high every time James elects to be in his element.
That’s what James will bring to the table again when he and the Lakers play the Golden State Warriors in today’s (Wednesday) Game One of the NBA Western Conference best-of-seven semifinals.
James’s seventh-seeded crew advanced after they upset second-ranked Memphis in six games, another testament to the Lakers’ resilience that should remind the Warriors of a tough grind ahead of them.
But Steph Curry must be unfazed as he enters Game One waving a 50-point effort in the Warriors’ 120-110 Game Seven victory to eliminate the exciting Sacramento Kings.
At 35, Curry is old by any yardstick of imagination. But like James, he has remained as tough-as-nails, his triple-riddled 50 points on Monday being the highest scored in a Game Seven in NBA playoff history.
The match-up between two of the greatest NBA players ever rekindles their four straight Finals playoffs duel in 2015-1018 when James wasn’t a Laker yet.
It will also mark the first time that a sixth-seeded and a seventh-seeded will battle it out since the Houston-Seattle affair in the 1987 playoffs.
Today’s Game One and Friday’s Game Two will both be played at Chase Center in San Francisco, with the fight-for-four winner facing the victor of the Denver-Phoenix clash (Denver is up, 1-0) for the Western Conference crown.
James or Curry?
Ask me not.
THAT’S IT Happy birthday to Alfonso “Mayo” R. Mendoza III!