Former Lakers champion Byron Scott seems to think it's probably time for LeBron James to move on from the Purple and Gold.
Speaking as a guest on Power 106 Los Angeles on Thursday, Scott and co-host Concrete discussed James's recent claim that today's NBA is more challenging than the NBA of the 1980s and 90s.
"Listen, you know I'm a big LeBron fan," Scott said. "But that was laughable to me when I heard that. I said, 'Wait a minute. So you saying that it's easier to play in the 80s than it is today?'"
"The game was so much more physical then," Scott went on, adding that the "pace of the game was just as fast as it is today."
"So I just thought it was laughable, you know, coming from one of the greatest players that ever played the game to say that it is harder to play now than it was then."
Then, Concrete asked the ex-Showtime Laker if he was "ready" to see Bron go from L.A.
Scott sat for a minute, mulling his answer, then replied: "Yeah," he laughed. "Like I said, I'm a fan [of LeBron's], but I don't mince words either. I think this should be his last year here [in L.A.]."
Take a peek at that below, starting at 3:56:
Speaking on an episode of his Mind the Game podcast released at the end of January, James detailed for listeners the differences he sees between today's NBA and that of years past.
"The game is different. I want people and our fans to understand that playing 82 games in the '80s and '90s is not the same as playing 82 games in the 2020s. It's just not," he said. "The way we play, the level of pace, the level of the speed that we're playing at, it's a different game now. It's a totally different game."
Even if LeBron is correct (and it's worth noting that he is hardly the first person to make such an assertion), it sounds like Scott is simply ready for the King's outsized influence on the Lakers to head somewhere else. And that's fair enough; as excellent as Bron is, he does wield enough power to direct the future of whichever franchise he is with. That might get old sometimes.
Luckily for Scott, though, the 41-year-old James will become an unrestricted free agent this summer. So we'll see.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lakers Great Hopes This Is LeBron James’s Last Year With Franchise.
