AmusingFiddle wrote:I honestly don’t see the intensity level activated. You want to see intensity, go watch some footage of Kobe in the years leading up to his ACL injury.
I think, as he did in Clev, he is being passive on purpose to prove a point. It really bothers me that he doesn’t just take over the game if the others don’t bring it every night.
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He probably thinks that if he just tried to do everything himself ever game the team will never get better around him. Logically that makes sense for most things. He probably also doesn't want to injury himself again trying to go for 40 every game, because that would certainly make the situation worse.
With the Cavs last yet and even for a few years, there were a lot of games where he just seemed to always do enough to keep it close. Score a basket here and there to keep the deficit to 8-9-10 points or so. Go hard for a possession to end a scoreless streak. Like he was always waiting to see if someone else would take over the game.
Compared to a lot of guys LeBron seems much more big picture and long term focused than most. Guys like Kobe or WB, MJ or whomever treated just about every game like a war, they didn't care about the next one or next season. LeBron, or even guys like Tim Duncan and Magic Johnson seemed to take a different approach, big picture guys. Most players are probably somewhere in the middle, and are more at the mercy of the game or the pace than anything.
With this team he probably wants those guys to show urgency or intensity to win now, rather than just waiting around for it to happen. Maybe that's just part of the culture this Lakers crew has established the past few years, not really any sense of urgency and always a "it'll get better next year" pov that isn't really the case. It certainly took some time for the Cavs to get that in 2014-15, and outside of some short stretches I'm not sure they really ever did. So many times in 2017 and even 2018 it just seemed like no one cared and just knew that no matter what they'd probably end up in the playoffs or in the Finals even if individually players performed poorly. With this team it sort of feels like a number of guys don't seem invested in the long term and have no reason to care, or are young enough they don't feel any sense of urgency.