LeBron James did not sound ready to walk away after the Lakers fell 131-108 to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night at Crypto.com Arena, a loss that put Los Angeles in a 3-0 hole in the Western Conference semifinals. Asked about the latest collapse, James pointed first to the third quarter and the lack of energy that turned a one-point halftime deficit into a 13-point lead for Oklahoma City.
"The third quarter, we’ll start with that," James said after the loss. "We didn’t have the energy, the effort." He added that he was not "angry or disappointed," even as the Lakers dropped another game after holding a halftime lead.
The number line told the rest of the story. James, who has played in a record 300 playoff games, was on the floor nearly 11 of the 12 minutes in the third quarter and made one shot in that span. He finished with 12 misses in 19 attempts, missed four of six three-point tries, had zero offensive rebounds and ended with a minus-24 rating. The Thunder, the defending NBA champions, kept pouring it on while the Lakers again lost control late.
That was the second straight round in which the Lakers had been able to celebrate a win only after pushing through the first series to a Game 6 clincher against the Houston Rockets. This time, there was no comeback to celebrate. Oklahoma City has now beaten Los Angeles in all three games of the semifinals, and Monday night’s Game 4 is next on the schedule.
The matchup has been made harder by the Lakers playing without Luka Doncic, but the immediate problem is simpler than that. They have been outplayed in the same middle stretch that broke Saturday’s game open, and James sounded less interested in blame than in the fact that the series is not over. "I mean, obviously you’re disappointed in the simple fact of, like, being down 3-0 obviously," he said. "But I mean, you know, we still got life and that’s all you can ask for."
Even so, the image of James on Saturday carried the weight of the night. He looked tired. He looked 41. Bronny, the story noted, had only six fewer baskets than him in the game. For a player whose career has stretched across two decades and a record number of playoff appearances, the question now is not whether the burden is heavy. It is whether the Lakers have any answer left before the Thunder finish the job.
