When I saw the latest news about LeBron—that it’s looking like he’ll miss several weeks with a foot injury—the first thing I thought about wasn’t the remainder of this season. Instead, I thought about James’s first season with the Lakers, back in 2018–19.
If you can remember back that far, you’ll recall that the club was made up of James and a number of talented youngsters (Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, Brandon Ingram and Kyle Kuzma) that’d been mentioned endlessly in potential trade talks for Pelicans superstar Anthony Davis.
Those Lakers showed promise and beat the holiday spirit out of the defending-champion Warriors, featuring Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, on Christmas Day by a whopping 26 points. But the more important takeaway from that day was that Los Angeles—in fourth place at day’s end—lost James for five and a half weeks with a groin injury in what was essentially his first long-term injury as an NBA player.
