LeBron James has played in 295 postseason games across 23 seasons. He has won four championships, four Finals MVPs, and hit shots, logged minutes and thrown passes in every scenario basketball has produced. On Saturday night, inside a Lakers locker room after a Game 1 win over the Houston Rockets, he said the one thing that still managed to crack through all of that.
"I was on the floor with my son, like, in a playoff game. That's probably the craziest thing that's ever happened to me in my career," James told reporters following Los Angeles' 117-95 opener against Houston. "It was just so cool to be out there with him, and his brother and sister and his mom in the building, and his grandma."
James and Bronny James became the first father-son duo in NBA history to share the floor during a playoff game. LeBron is 41 years old and in his 23rd season. Bronny is a rookie guard in his first. The full James family — LeBron's wife Savannah, daughter Zhuri, son Bryce and LeBron's mother Gloria — was in attendance at Crypto.com Arena for the moment.
The oddity of the moment was not lost on the nine-time All-NBA First Team pick. In a playoff series his team was not expected to survive without their co-stars, LeBron arrived as the lone superstar standing on the floor. Luka Doncic missed the game. Austin Reaves missed it. Lonnie Walker IV missed it. Kevin Durant, the Rockets' biggest threat, missed it as a late scratch.
"I don't know. There's a lot of crazy things that's been going on this year for me," James said when asked if it was strange to be the last superstar standing in his own series.
Even in a shorthanded rotation, James was pointed about the blueprint for the rest of the series. All five Lakers starters finished in double figures and the team racked up 29 assists. LeBron himself finished with 19 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds — a triple-double in Year 23.
"We don't have a choice. It has to be that way. It has to be a collective group," James said. "When you're missing so much firepower like we are right now with AR and Lonnie being out, we all have to pitch in. We all have to do our job, and even do a little bit more. Protect one another offensively and defensively, and I think we did that tonight."
Asked whether the roster crisis had tightened the team's spirit coming into the series, James leaned on the regular-season reps. The Lakers played 82 games before Game 1, and spent the final week before the playoffs reworking the offense to account for what they knew would be a short-handed backcourt.
"We spent a lot of time the week leading up to this game honing in on what we need to do offensively, because it's a different style how we play now when you're missing so much," James said. "Our game plan didn't change that much as far as who we're going against. Getting the news late, the late scratch of KD, changed some of our situational things. But that team is still dangerous — even more dangerous with KD, obviously — but they're still dangerous, and I thought we handled it with a lot of professionalism."
The most LeBron moment of the night came when he was asked what he took from the win. Before the reporter finished the question, he had already started answering about what went wrong.
"Right after the game ended and I got in my locker, I'm already thinking about situations where we could have been better, thinking about ways I could have been better, putting us in position to be more successful both offensively and defensively," James said. "We have a lot of room to improve. There are things that we just said we wanted to accomplish and some of the things that we did not accomplish tonight as a team."
That is the part of LeBron that has never changed across 23 years. The part that has changed is sitting three seats down from him in the locker room, wearing the same jersey, playing in the same playoff game. For one night at least, that was the crazy part.
