Dave McMenaminESPN Staff Writer4 min read
CLEVELAND — The name of the arena may have changed, the locker room where he wears his jersey may have been across the hall and the iconic headband look may have been replaced by a now easily recognizable gray beard, but LeBron James was Playing basketball. Cleveland won on Saturday night.
same as before.
The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the hometown Cavaliers 121-115 to move to 10-7 on the season.
While it wasn’t exactly a classic performance from James — he scored 22 points on 8-for-23 shooting, including 1-for-9 from 3 — he sealed the win with two consecutive points with less than two minutes left. In the fourth, a layup and dunk extended Los Angeles’ lead from one to five.
Just as James keeps returning to his former teams, the 21-year veteran continues to achieve great things throughout his career. In fact, his charitable foundation opened a museum on Saturday morning in his hometown of Akron, Ohio — home of LeBron James — to document all the feats he continues to accomplish.
“To be able to come back after 11 years here after being in Miami and win a championship for this team, this city, I think the city of Cleveland went through a 52-year (championship) drought or something like that. For anyone A sports team, I think no matter how old I get, it’s something I’ll never forget,” James said. “I will always remember that moment.”
The Cavaliers did their part by treating James as an old friend rather than an opponent that night. When James was announced to the starting lineup, Cleveland’s mascot Moon Dog approached the Lakers and gave James a fist-pumping salute. During a timeout in the first quarter, the video board played a lengthy video honoring James’ move to the top of the NBA’s all-time scoring list, with many in the crowd of 19,432 standing to cheer the 38-year-old star. finished.
“It’s always a really cool feeling to come back to this floor and look up and be away from almost all the banners in this arena,” James said. “The first flag, the one in the middle, is the ’16 championship , so that’s pretty cool.”
It has been seven years since James led the Cavaliers to come back from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals and win the championship. Cleveland defeated the Golden State Warriors, who had a record-breaking 73-9 regular season record, and Stephen Curry became the first unanimous MVP in league history.
James barely slowed down. He shot a career-high 57.8 percent from the field that night and continued to play significant minutes as Los Angeles dealt with an early-season injury. He acknowledged Saturday that “we didn’t build this roster for myself and (Anthony Davis) to have a huge burden” because he wants to get this team off the ground and do its best to move in the right direction. direction forward.
Los Angeles’ effort against the Cavaliers proved that the team might be able to sustain this success if James puts his foot off the gas and conserves some energy for another playoff run. The Lakers made 34 assists on 47 field goal attempts, and Davis led Los Angeles’ seven double-digit scorers with a season-high 32 points.
But the Lakers still have 65 games to figure it all out. The Lakers only travel to Cleveland once per season, which means James may only have a few games left in his old stomping ground in his career — barring the Lakers-Cavaliers game in the Finals before he retires.
“It’s special,” James said. “Being a kid from Akron is pretty special. I grew up 30 miles south of here, to be able to get drafted here, spend my first seven years here and make some teams Something special that I’ve never seen. When I was drafted, I said I wanted to light up this place like Vegas. So I feel like I’ve done a good job at that in my 11 years here.”
His 11 years with the Cavaliers and the rest of James’ journey will be commemorated in his new museum. General admission tickets are $23, with proceeds going to fund training programs for students, parents and educators as part of his I Promise School. The museum displays artifacts from his upbringing, including the oversized white suit he wore on draft night and the game shoes he wore on some of his biggest nights. The exhibition was curated by his mother, Gloria James.
“Ever since I first started playing sports, I used to get angry at my mom for trying to save everything,” James said. “When the museum was preparing this stuff, she threw it right back in my face because there was a lot of stuff there It’s all because of the stuff she saved. It’s pretty cool.”
His mom will have more stat sheets to file, more game balls to file before he calls it quits, and more clutch goals like when he beat the Cavaliers on Saturday night. Scored like that.
But for a man whose motto for the past two decades has been “the pursuit of greatness,” he at least gave himself a night to pause and reflect.
“I think it’s pretty cool that I’m able to do something in my life that brings back my community and continues to highlight my community and give my community a place that people want to visit and want to see and learn about. I Want to be proud of it,” James said. “I am. I’m proud that my foundation is able to do some great things, and this is just one of the things that we can all be proud of in my hometown.”