Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz reacts to the Celtics defeating the Lakers and what a potential injury for LeBron James could mean moving forward.
Video Transcript
One of the greatest rivalries in all of sports was on display Saturday, and I’m not talking about Duke, North Carolina.
No.
Celtics, Lakers in a battle that many thought could be a NBA Finals preview.
No disrespect to Cleveland and Oklahoma City.
I understand they’re leading their respective conferences, but this is #2 versus #2 in a Lakers team that came in on an 8-game winning streak with the Celtics team that has absolutely been shooting lights out.
So what did it mean for this game?
Well, The first half, all the stars showed up.
It was everything we could hope it could be and it was a back and forth matchup.
But the third quarter blew this thing out.
The Celtics outscored the Lakers 29-13 in the third quarter.
Looked like it was going to be an absolute blowout.
They’re up by as many as 22.
But the Lakers came scratching and clawing.
They got this game down to single digits, but they weren’t able to fully get it done.
They end up losing by 10.
Some significant things happened in this.
game, not the least of which was Jason Tatum going off for 40 points, 12 boards, and 8 assists, absolutely dominating throughout the course of the game.
And for the Lakers, while for a while it looked like they could go back and forth and they could do their stars versus the Celtics stars and keep up.
In the 4th quarter, that took a huge hit as their comeback was being mounted as LeBron James left the game with what is currently only known as a groin injury.
No idea what it means.
For him moving forward, but he was not able to return and without him, the Lakers weren’t able to close the gap any more than they did.
Moving forward, LA’s gonna have to figure out what to do with the health of their stars.
All good feels for the win streak they’ve had.
But currently, coming off of this loss, watching Luca Fill hobble throughout the course of this game and realizing LeBron never made it back in, concern will now suddenly become panic if the Lakers don’t have their superstars moving forward.
