You want to hear an absolutely wild stat? Friday night marked the 100th time that LeBron James has scored at least 20 points in one half of a playoff game. It was his 290th career playoff game. That means that James has, for the last 18 seasons, scored 20 points in a single half in one out of every three playoff games.
We throw the word “insane” around too much in sports parlance. That is insane. I heard the stat on the broadcast and, to tell you the truth, figured it had to be a mistake. It’s not.
It also wasn’t enough to get the Lakers a win.
Instead, it was the Minnesota Timberwolves spoiling James’ 38-point gem with a 116-104 victory in Game 3 behind a career night from Jaden McDaniels and another potential torch-passing performance from Anthony Edwards — who could be on his way to his third dethronement of an all-time great in the past two seasons.
Last year Edwards picked off Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokić in consecutive series. Now, with a 2-1 lead in this series, he’s two wins from sending LeBron home.
Anthony Edwards is two wins from adding LeBron James and Luka Dončić to his collection of playoff victims
Sam Quinn
On Friday, Edwards, who finished with 29 points and five 3-pointers and assisted for another 29 points, turned a tie game with 4:19 remaining into a 12-point win by scoring or assisting on all five of Minnesota closing buckets.
He hit the 3 that broke the 103-103 tie out of a timeout when the Lakers were about to ready to get over the hump, probably the biggest shot of the game. Then he got downhill and slung a strike to Naz Reid for a corner triple and a six-point lead.
Then he cooked LeBron:
And finished with the dagger:
Meanwhile, McDaniels continued his ascent from valuable role player to, hell, a potential future All-Star? We all know about his defense, but after going for 25 points in Game 1, which at that point was a career playoff high, McDaniels poured in 30 in Game 3, and he did it largely off his own creation with some flat-out superstar-level finishes in traffic.
The Wolves are for real. The defense is elite. Julius Randle had another terrific game. Reid is the perfect spacing big to close with, as Chris Finch smartly sat Rudy Gobert late. The Lakers were completely ignoring Gobert for his inability to finish anything in the paint, which mucks up the advantage Minnesota should have out of the double-teams being thrown at Edwards, who made fine use of the extra driving room by getting downhill on two of the game-sealing conversions.
There are no moral victories in the NBA, and certainly not in the postseason, so Edwards and the Wolves clearly won the Game 3 fight. But I’ll still say that LeBron won the night.
Honestly, the “how’s he still doing this stuff at 40 years old?” stuff gets pretty tired. But seriously, how in the hell is he still doing this at 40 years old? And this isn’t a normal 40, by the way. This is 22 years of leading-man NBA basketball. This is 20 straight playoff runs, over which he has never missed a single game.
I repeat, LeBron James has never, in almost 300 career playoff games, sat out. Not even once. His body, albeit maniacally maintained, has been pounded on from every conceivable angle. And he’s still the one overpowering guys damn near half his age in one of the most intensely physical basketball environments imaginable.
LeBron isn’t the athlete he used to be, but he’s not far off. He still makes plenty of head-down drives and above-the-rim finishes through contact that conjure Miami and Cleveland images. And now he’s become a knockdown shooter, too. He hit fives 3s on Friday and only needed 21 shots for his 30 points.
“He was incredible,” Edwards said of LeBron. “He did everything in his power to try to will [the Lakers] to a win. He was shooting it from Yucatan.”
I don’t have any idea whether Edwards was referring to Yucatán, Mexico or the unincorporated community of Yucatan, Minnesota — but either way, his point stands. LeBron was shooting that thing from deep.
“He caught one of them in transition and I was kind of like closing out, and I’m like, ‘He not about to shoot this,'” Edwards recalled. “And he launched it. I’m not gonna lie, it was fun to watch him, to be competing against him today for sure.”
LeBron had some rough moments, too. He smoked a wide-open layup. He fumbled the ball away to start what proved to be a swing sequence with just over five minutes to play, ending on a McDaniels and-one on the other end. He hit the side of the backboard on a late 3-point attempt that was officially L.A.’s last gasp.
Pay no mind to the morons who try to highlight these lowlights. LeBron was unbelievable in this game, and for all the temptation to say the Lakers are done in this series, be careful. Luka Dončić was sick and didn’t play anywhere near the level he showed in the first two games of this series, and for better or worse, the Lakers are designed to win by having the two best players on the court.
On Friday they only had one, and they still felt like they let this one slip.
So yes, history tells us that in a 1-1 series, it has been the team that wins Game 3 that goes on to win the series over 70% of the time. But if you don’t understand by now that normal numbers don’t apply to LeBron James, you never will.
