{"id":29663,"date":"2014-12-16T13:32:27","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T18:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/?p=29663"},"modified":"2014-12-16T13:32:27","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T18:32:27","slug":"reminder-lebron-still-does-impossible-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/?p=29663","title":{"rendered":"Reminder: LeBron still does impossible stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HX_BSZ9bOg0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Hi, it&#8217;s me. Thick in the middle of law school finals (had one today, have another tomorrow, and the last one on Friday), so time hasn&#8217;t been my friend of late. I still wanted to get in on this little bit of absurdity. The fun starts at the 2:22 mark of the video above (props, as always, to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/DawkinsMTA\/featured\">@DawkinsMTA<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Off a Kemba Walker fast-break layup, LeBron grabs the inbounds pass, gets into a full quarterback stance, and heaves the ball from just inside the Cavs&#8217; free-throw line to Kyrie, who made a ridiculous layup in traffic. (I&#8217;m fairly sure Kyrie makes more layups off damn near the top of the backboard than anyone else in the league.) Oh, and LeBron threw that with his\u00a0<em>left hand.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty well-known at this point that LeBron does everything but shoot a basketball left-handed, and his ability to drive and finish with his left hand has always been a vital and underrated part of what makes him great, but that&#8217;s freaking ludicrous.<\/p>\n<p>As has been mentioned, LeBron&#8217;s pretty clearly past his physical prime &#8212; he&#8217;s not the\u00a0holy-christ jumper he used to be, and, more importantly, he doesn&#8217;t have enough in his legs to compete on both ends for the full game the way he used to. This began in earnest last season (I said as much <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nba\/eye-on-basketball\/24645079\/eye-on-basketball-podcast-talking-cavs-love-with-john-krolik\">on this CBS.com podcast<\/a>! Don&#8217;t listen to the part where I say Golden State was dramatically overvaluing Klay Thompson. Just focus on where I say LeBron is past his physical prime. I am so often wrong.), especially the defense part, but nobody really noticed it because people are slow to change their opinions on how good perimeter defenders are \u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/news\/features\/john_schuhmann\/nba-com-2014-15-gm-survey\/#players\">even GMs<\/a>\u00a0&#8212; seriously, guys?), and the Heat&#8217;s offense got LeBron the ball in positions where he had a deep post-up or an outright layup or dunk, minimizing the need for him to slice all the way through defenses like he did in his first stint with the Cavs.<\/p>\n<p>The point here is that even though LeBron&#8217;s crazy dunks are probably gone, he&#8217;s still a player capable of doing insane, insane things, and we should appreciate them.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#8217;d say I&#8217;d like to see more of the kind of action we get at the 2:10 mark of the above video, where LeBron gets an easy layup after catching Lance Stephenson cheating a screen, but that play was entirely thanks to Al Jefferson. His man is setting a screen, LeBron is basically scratching his back, and he&#8217;s just standing still and staring straight ahead, thinking about muffins. Never change, Big Al.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, it&#8217;s me. Thick in the middle of law school finals (had one today, have another tomorrow, and the last&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[427,163,412],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-29663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multimedia","tag-fun-stuff","tag-lebron-james","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29664,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663\/revisions\/29664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29663"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=29663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}