LeBron James Has Already Turned to Throwing His Teammates Under the Bus After Another Loss
The Los Angeles Lakers are off to a rough start — as many predicted would be the case when LeBron James signed a four-year deal with the team in the offseason.
Monday night they lost yet another close game, falling to the Minnesota Timberwolves 124-120 to drop to 2-5.
While it’s way too soon to panic, the frustration was evident in James’ postgame remarks.
“We gave up 20 offensive rebounds. We knew coming into the game that they are a very good offensive rebounding team, we stressed that, we understood that, and we still allowed them to get a lot of second-chance points,” James said.
While the defense was solid, LeBron said the team won’t win getting beat so badly on the glass.
“You hold a team to 42 percent shooting on their home floor, but you give up 20 offensive rebounds and allow them to get second-chance points, and you enable them to get 18 points off your turnovers, you’re not going to win many games like that,” James said.
James has preached patience with his young team, but he indicated after the game that his patience is wearing thin.
“We talk about patience, but we can’t have a recurrence of the same thing over and over,” he said. “Doing things over and over and over and expecting different results — that’s insanity. We can’t keep making the same mistakes over and over.”
At what point does your patience run out, James was asked.
“You probably don’t want to be around me when my patience runs out,” he said. “I’m serious.”
For Minnesota, Jimmy Butler had a game-high 32 points, including this 3-pointer in the defender’s face.
James, meanwhile, paced the Lakers with 29 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
He ended his postgame remarks on a positive note.
“We’ve just got to figure it out. It’s not going to be one guy — it’s going to be all of us,” James said. “We’re all in this together so we’ll figure it out.”
LeBron and the Lakers will try to figure it out again Wednesday when they take on the 2-5 Dallas Mavericks.
It could take a while, as it’s not just James who needs to learn to play with his new teammates — they also have to learn how to play with him.
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