NEW ORLEANS — The doubts alone won't doom LeBron James. The questions about his athleticism at his supposedly advanced age—two weeks short of 30—won't even fluster him, no more than the oddly-assigned Luke Babbitt could on most possessions Friday.
"You can look at it in a bad way or a good way," James said late Friday night of recent critiques of his explosiveness, after tying his season-high 41 points on an economical 24 shots against the New Orleans Pelicans. "I’ve expanded the rest of my game. I’m still out there making plays. My athleticism, obviously I’m not the 18 year old kid I was before. But I can still do the things I need to do to be successful."
The aches? They won't often impede his efforts. His left knee began to bother him in the third quarter of Tuesday's win against Toronto for reasons he couldn't identify, before it swelled on the flight to Oklahoma City. The injury caused him to miss one game and, after it swelled again on the short flight to the Bayou, made him believe he might miss another.
But he didn't miss it, and he then went on to make eight shots in Friday's first quarter, including a couple of slams.
"I felt good in my test before the game that I was put through," he said. "Just try to go out and help our team win. It was a little bit unsuccessful though."
It was.
That's because his team's defense—not James' supposed declining athleticism—is the one thing that, at times, can still prove too much to overcome.
That was the unmistakable message of the Cavaliers' 119-114 loss to the Pelicans, who played without their superstar, Anthony Davis, for the final 41 minutes after a chest contusion briefly left him struggling to breathe. Without their All-Star power forward, who had made his first four shots, the Pelicans still made 55.7 percent of their attempts overall, including 42.9 percent on 28 heaves from behind the arc.
Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2298610-cavaliers-achilles-heel-is-team-defense-not-lebron-james-purported-decline
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