Inside the NBA roasted LeBron James for selfishly keeping his All-Star spot despite an injury
LeBron James was voted as an All-Star starter for the 21st time in his career. But fans aren’t seeing him on the court today.
The Lakers star is sitting the game out because of an ankle injury that no one seemed to know about until today when James told everyone about it during his pre-game media availability.
Under normal circumstances, that’s not a problem!
Players miss the All-Star game because of injury all the time. It’s no big deal. Usually, the league just dials up a replacement and someone else gets to play in that player’s place.
That’s what happened with Anthony Davis this season. That’s what happened with Giannis Antetokounmpo this season.
That’s what should’ve happened with James here, too. But the problem is no one knew about this injury until about an hour before the game tipped off.
https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1891276461857767587
That stinks. Not only do we lose out on watching LeBron, but some other player out there doesn’t get a chance to participate because of this late notice.
The key question here is when did James know he wasn’t going to play and whether it would’ve left enough time for the league to find a replacement. We’ll never truly know.
The Inside the NBA crew wasn’t here for it. At all.
Jalen Rose said James “took a roster spot from somebody.” Vince Carter said there are others who were “worthy” enough and could’ve stepped into the spotlight. Even Draymond Green — James’ good friend — was critical of this.
On the one hand, James has an injury and surely he doesn’t want to risk things getting any worse by playing on a bad ankle.
On the other hand, we didn’t know about this before? The Lakers haven’t played a game since Feb. 12. James had to injure his ankle between then and now at some point. Even just a few days notice instead of an hour would’ve given the league a chance to get a replacement in there.
I guess, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. James isn’t playing and the game is still going. It is what it is.
But this just doesn’t feel like a great look for the league.