PARIS – He came out in shoes as shiny and golden as the medal he would put around his neck Saturday night for the third, and perhaps final, time in his career.
For LeBron James, the color choice seemed like a statement: About his intent in the Olympics, about his mission for Team USA, about everything in his basketball life leading to another gold medal.
Even with all he’s done at age 39, James didn’t come here just to help his country win a tournament. He proved a point. As long as he’s playing this sport, nobody is going to shine brighter.
LeBron, in fact, has still got it. He was the best player at the Olympics, winning the tournament’s MVP award. He’s still so clearly capable of dominating a basketball game at a level hardly anyone in the world can match.
And it leads to one question more important than what he did over this last month: How are the Los Angeles Lakers screwing up this chapter of his career so badly?
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I’ll admit, despite being named All-NBA third team, I thought it finally looked like James lost a step last season. And I thought because of how much investment they had tied up in James and Anthony Davis that it didn’t really matter what else they did: The Lakers were going to be stuck with an old team that would continue to be in play-in purgatory as James continued declining until his inevitable retirement.
Maybe the Lakers thought so, too. Maybe that explains why Rob Pelinka has sat on his hands this offseason, failing to make a single roster move to improve a team that went 47-35 last season and finished seventh in the Western Conference.
But after watching James plow through everyone at the Olympics, I’m actually now enraged at the Lakers’ front office for fiddling around on the fringes the last few years while time runs short on this once-in-a-lifetime career.
OK, so he’s not quite the defender he once was, and you can’t play him 82 games the way he used to. But those are the only concessions to time James has made as he has reached his late 30s.
His physical capability is still elite. His passing is still otherworldly. His ability to read the game and make decisions may be better than ever. When he’s determined to just put his head down and be a freight train to the rim, nobody in the world can stop him.
Can James still lead a team to the NBA title? How could you watch these Olympics and think anything else?
Even on a team full of superstars, he elevated above everyone. When it’s America’s best versus the world’s best, there’s still no doubt who gets the job done.
In this tournament, nobody else was going to do it.
Anthony Edwards didn’t have the gravitas. Jayson Tatum was just along for the ride. The guys who are supposed to eventually replace James as the American face of the league weren’t ready for this.
In the end, this team was conceived by and for James to have one last Olympic run, with his few true peers in the NBA pantheon alongside.
But from training camp to exhibitions and all the way to the final game, everyone else on this team rode the roller coaster. Steph Curry went from being uncomfortable early to making a barrage of 3-pointers that held off France in the gold medal game. Kevin Durant had to work his way back from injury. Joel Embiid was useful in some moments, out of place in others.
James, though, was always there. He erased potential humiliating moments against South Sudan and Germany. He was the Americans’ energy source in the preliminary rounds. When everything was on the line against Serbia, James willed Team USA across the finish line. And in the gold medal game against France, everything ran through him: 14 points, six rebounds, 10 assists in nearly 33 minutes on the floor.
Even on a team full of superstars, this gold medal was only possible because James wore red, white and blue one more time. Nearing his 40th birthday, we’ve never seen anything like it.
And what are the Lakers doing with this national treasure? Selling tickets and running out the clock.
There probably aren’t many more great years left, but these Olympics showed that it’s still worth it for the Lakers to make the most of them – trading draft picks, mortgaging the future, whatever it takes.
He’s still one of the best players on the planet, and there’s no time to waste. What are they waiting for?
James will be 43 years old when the next Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles, and it’s impossible to believe he’ll still be this kind of player four years from now. But with LeBron James, you don’t just have to allow for the impossible. You have to imagine it.
Team USA did and was rewarded with a gold medal. Now it’s the Lakers’ turn.