The Lakers faced the Kawhi Leonard-less Toronto Raptors on Sunday night at Staples Center and proceeded to get dominated by Serge Ibaka and Kyle Lowry in a 121-107 loss that was more lopsided than that final score indicates.
The loss was bad and in that loss LeBron James had his worst game as a member of the Lakers. He scored 18 points with six assists and two rebounds, and was a -16 in 28 minutes. After the game, LeBron rolled up to Diddy’s birthday party in Los Angeles in a Rolls Royce with wife Savannah to take part in the celebration.
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This, naturally, caught the ire of some Lakers fans and members of the media who took it as an example of LeBron not caring about winning and losing with the Lakers, given the nature of the loss, and used it as evidence that he only moved to L.A. to enhance his off-court lifestyle and enjoy this sort of thing more often. At once, I understand the frustration of Laker Nation as the improvement in the LeBron era has not been as swift as originally hoped, but at the same time this is just how LeBron works. He is insanely competitive, but not at the level of Kobe Bryant to the point of him not winning effecting every aspect of his life (or, at the least, making it seem as though that was the case). LeBron can compartmentalize his basketball life, entertainment mogul life, and family life in a way few are capable of, and that leads to lots of frustrations from fans that aren’t as willing or able to do the same.
It’s early November, and if you haven’t figured it out by now watching his defensive effort, Lakers fans, LeBron doesn’t care about the early regular season all that much. Ask a Cavs fan, they’ll tell you all about it. That’s not to say LeBron is happy losing, but he also knows how to compartmentalize things and enjoy his life off the court even when things aren’t going perfectly on it while still putting in plenty of work to try to improve things. LeBron wasn’t going to call an overnight practice after a back-to-back to suddenly fix their interior defense, so him going home and drinking some wine on his back porch while listening to some album that hasn’t been released yet wouldn’t have had any more positive impact on his or the Lakers’ play than him going to Diddy’s party.
He’ll still win you games you probably shouldn’t win, which will help even out some of the lopsided losses that come from nights where he simply doesn’t have it (those often come on back-to-backs now that he’s 33). He’ll still put up gaudy stat lines most nights, but, fairly or unfairly, it’s going to be on the rest of the team and Luke Walton to figure out how to cobble together a defense that can stop teams when LeBron is not in Zero Dark Twenty-Three mode or whatever he calls it when he locks in for the playoffs and/or the stretch run to get there.
Also, I think it’s fair to bring back my theory from July that this season has always been planned by LeBron and Magic Johnson to be a gap year, before making a full charge next summer when they can hopefully add significantly more talent in free agency thanks to flexibility from all their one-year deals signed this summer — even if they’ll never admit that’s the case and continue to insist this year’s about competing at the highest level.
Beyond all of those reasons it’s perfectly alright for LeBron to enjoy himself even after a loss, it’s a Diddy party. You don’t say no to a Diddy party. Are you crazy? If you ever have the opportunity to go to a Diddy event, you go. Full stop. No questions asked.
