One win from a title, Lakers try to remain focused - OCRegister

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — He’s raised other banners in other buildings. But not at Staples Center.

LeBron James came to the Lakers as a fully formed superstar at 33. He had won three titles, four MVP awards and many assumed the autumn of his career was approaching quickly. But a Lakers superstar isn’t measured by the championships on his resume when he arrives in Los Angeles – it’s by the championships he’s won by the time he leaves.

“What I’ve learned being a Laker is that the Laker faithful don’t give a damn what you’ve done before,” he said. “Until you become a Laker, you’ve got to do it with them, as well.”

James and the Lakers are a win away from fulfilling that standard by which all Lakers teams are measured: Game 5 against the Miami Heat is Friday night at AdventHealth Arena, the Lakers’ first of three possible attempts to close out the longest season in NBA history.

In his 17-year career, James has accomplished many Herculean tasks, including fronting the only team in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 deficit in a Finals (incidentally the same lead the Lakers have now). But if the Lakers win on Friday, James would accomplish the one that has taken the most time, 353 days after the 2019-20 season first began, and he would become one of four men – and the only true franchise player – to win an NBA championship with three franchises.

The series so far has seen James lead the Lakers in scoring (27.8 ppg) assists (8.5 apg) and rebounding (11.0 rpg). Close behind him in several key categories (25.8 ppg, 9.3 rpg) is Anthony Davis, who also is averaging 1.8 blocked shots and a steal per game while stepping in to guard the Heat’s Jimmy Butler in Game 4. The two are widely seen as close contestants for Finals MVP should the Lakers prevail – James has won the award in each of his three previous championship seasons in Miami and Cleveland.

But vying for that honor hasn’t brought contention to the partnership that James and Davis have formed this past year on the Lakers. James said Thursday that he had admired Davis since he was a college player at Kentucky in 2011 – recalling a game-winning block the then-teenager made on John Henson almost a decade ago. When they were at the 2012 London Olympics for USA Basketball, James respected the way Davis “came in with a sponge mentality” and knew how good he was going to be.

James famously told ESPN in 2018 that it would be “amazing” to play with Davis, a comment that eroded chemistry in his own locker room but started clearing the path for the Lakers to trade for the 6-foot-10 star who was then with New Orleans.

“You look at a guy who can do everything out on the floor versus anybody, and you have visions of what that could look like if you were to team up,” he said. “I was speaking just true from the heart and from a basketball mindset. … I paid for it, for that moment. But I didn’t care, because I just know how special he is.”

The Heat have not rolled out the carpet for the Lakers to simply take the title, after winning Game 3 on the strength of a monumental Butler triple-double, then battling closely for Game 4 behind the return of Bam Adebayo.

Said Butler of facing a win-or-go-home Game 5: “It’s not win or go home, it’s win or win. That’s how we think about it.”

While the unique isolation of the NBA bubble brings more personal urgency to returning home and reuniting with families, several Lakers including James and Coach Frank Vogel said they felt focused like they were for any of their three previous closeout games, in which these Lakers are 3-0.

“We’re not thinking about tomorrow, we’re not thinking about win or lose,” Vogel said. “We’re thinking about how to guard pick-and-rolls, how to execute better offensively without turning the basketball over, all those types of things that fall in the bucket of the process and the task at hand.”

The Lakers are hoping for an emotional lift from wearing their Black Mamba jerseys, uniforms designed by Kobe Bryant and brought back for these playoffs. The Lakers have gone 4-0 when wearing the jerseys, including Game 2 of the Finals.

The Lakers were scheduled to wear the Black Mamba jerseys in the event of a Game 7 (and they still would), but the team elected to move up another appearance for Game 5 in the close-out attempt.

“Obviously his legacy in the NBA and then just with the organization, period, is something special,” Davis said. “For us to close it out in his honor is something that we look forward to, something that – an insane amount of pressure for sure, but we don’t want to lose, we don’t want to let him down.”

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One win from a title, Lakers try to remain focused - OCRegister
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