Bizarrely chaotic to the last drop, the Lakers’ cursed season took another sour turn Sunday afternoon as they stumbled closer to an inevitably unhappy ending with a 129-118 loss to the Denver Nuggets at Crypto.com Arena.
A pregame ceremony that featured NBA regular-season career scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presenting a social justice trophy named in his honor to Lakers forward Carmelo Anthony turned into a distinctly different kind of social justice discussion. It unexpectedly became an occasion for Abdul-Jabbar, who has been critical of social media posts by LeBron James that appeared to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus and support vaccine hesitancy at the potential expense to people of color, to double down on his criticism of the man who is destined to pass him on the all-time scoring list.
Abdul-Jabbar, who has written op-ed columns for The Times and this season wrote essays on substack.com saying James’ COVID-19 skepticism could increase already inequitable coronavirus-related issues in Black communities, said Sunday his disapproval of some of James’ actions “just comes from some of the things that he’s done and said are really beneath him, as far as I can see, with some of the great things that he’s done. He’s standing on both sides of the fence almost, you know. It makes it hard for me to accept that when he’s committed himself to a different take on everything. It’s hard to figure out where he’s standing. You’ve got to check him out every time.”
