Lakers News: Pundit Convinced LeBron James Has Definitively Aged Out Of Prime
Even before this year's Western Conference Finals officially concluded in a four-game Denver Nuggets sweep of your Los Angeles Lakers, at least one ESPN pundit was already out on LA All-Star LeBron James' prime.
Alan Hahn took to "Get Up" following Denver's 108-103 Game 2 victory over the Lakers to explain his thinking. In that contest, James scored 22 points (including 0-of-6 shooting from long range), dished out 10 assists and pulled down nine boards in the loss.
"You're watching this game, and there's a lot of things we can break down from this game, but the very first thing that I thought of when the game ended was LeBron James' battery is drained," Hahn opined. "It's like an old iPhone. When you plug it in and try to charge it up, it never gets back to 100%. He might be at that point now. We have never really seen him like that. He still can defend. There's a lot of things that he still can do on the court because of his high IQ and... his skill level."
"One of his greatest abilities was his durability," Hahn continued. "Because he's so strong and so much stronger than you, and could last longer than you in a playoff series, in a playoff run. But is this the first time that we've seen LeBron James and... Father Time catching up to him?"
After the series wrapped up last week, reports leaked that James might require surgery to repair his ongoing torn tendon in his right foot this offseason. How much the ailment impacted his play could be an ongoing question, though he really hadn't looked the same since first incurring the injury in February. The 38-year-old can't reasonably be expected to recreate his otherworldly two-way impact as a 28-year-old, but he did look fairly impressive all things considered even in his supposed NBA dotage.
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