On Thursday it was announced that LeBron James would miss his 18th straight game with a groin injury, but after this announcement came out something changed and James ended up playing.
The Lakers went 6-11 with James on the shelf, but got off to a good start in his return as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Los Angeles Clippers 123-120 in overtime.
James played 40 minutes in his return and just missed a triple-double. James scored 24 points to go with 14 rebounds and 9 assists. Not surprisingly James led the Lakers in all three of those offensive categories.
James was 9 for 22 from the field and did struggle from behind the 3-point line where he was just 1 for 6. You have to think there was a little rust in James game since this was the first time he has been in a game since Christmas day.
The Lakers really needed James to return and to return at 100%. While James was out the Lakers fell into the 9th spot overall in the Western Conference; so they’d be out of the playoffs. Now even with the win on Thursday the Lakers are still in 9th place, but they’re just 1 game out of the 8th spot and just 2 1/2 games from being in the 6th spot. As long as James is and can stay healthy you have to figure the Lakers will be a playoff team, but I don’t think they would be without him.
James returns just in time for the Lakers marquee match up against the Golden State Warriors Saturday night. The game will be telecast in prime time on ABC with a scheduled tip off of 7:30 p.m. cst.
Golden State will be hosting the Lakers, but the Warriors did just have their 11 game winning streak snapped at home by the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night 113-104. Is it possible that the Warriors saw that James had returned and where looking ahead to their Saturday night match up? Of course Philadelphia isn’t the type of team anyone should be looking past and if that’s what the Warriors did it cost them their wining streak.
Both teams had Friday night off: so there should be no scheduling issues as they face off tonight. Can the return of James give the Lakers the momentum to beat the Warriors? Or does the Lakers winning streak with James quickly end at 1 game?
Even though we didn’t end up talking about it much this week on Sports Time Radio and to be honest I didn’t hear as much buzz about this game as I normally do the Super Bowl is going to be played on Sunday.
Just like we do for ever NFL game we have made picks and I even reached out to a couple of knowledgeable sports fans and got their picks as well. With the exception of Mr. Fantasy who’ll make his pick on the live edition of Sports Time Radio Sunday morning from 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. cst. Anyway; here’s what we came up with.
Now for the Super Bowl we not only pick the winner of the game, but the score and who we think will win MVP.
Dan the Man likes New England 42-34 with Tom Brady winning the MVP.
Schaumburg Stu likes New England 27-14 with Rob Gronkowski winning MVP.
I am also going with New England 39-30 and I also have Gronkowski as my MVP.
Here are the picks from the two friends I reached out to.
Ken is on the New England bandwagon and has them winning 40-30 with Brady as MVP.
Right now Hank is the only one going with the Rams. He has it 34-30 with Todd Gurley winning the MVP.
That’s what we’re going with for tomorrow. Feel free to leave your pick in the comment section and let me know who you think will win with the final score and your MVP pick.
In non-Super Bowl football news I’m pretty sure we had a future Hall of Fame player retire on Friday as Julius Peppers called it a career at 39 years old after 17 NFL seasons.
Peppers spent 10 seasons with the Carolina Panthers four seasons with the Chicago Bears and three seasons with the Green Bay Packers. Carolina made Peppers the 2nd pick in the 2002 draft and h played there the first 8 years of his career. The Bears lured Peppers away from the Panthers with a 6-year $91.5 million dollar deal when he was a free agent. After four season in Chicago the Bears cut Peppers and the Packers quickly signed him to a 3-year $30 million dollar deal. After his contract with the Packers expired he returned to Carolina for the final two years of his career.
Now I called Peppers a future Hall of Famer and it starts with the fact that he has 159 1/2 sacks in his career which is good for 4th all-time in NFL history. Peppers finished just 1/2 a sack behind Kevin Greene for 3rd. Peppers also has 11 career interceptions; four of which he returned for touchdowns. He also recovered 21 fumbles in his career and scored on two of those recoveries. Peppers played in 266 games and started 244 of them. He finishes with 724 combined tackles, 557 solo tackles, 167 assists on tackles and 175 tackles for loss. Peppers also recorded 186 quarterback hits which is a stat they just started keeping in 2006. You can add the 2002 AP Rookie of the Year award, 9 Pro Bowl selections and 3 All-Pro selections to Peppers resume.
Do you think Julius Peppers will be in the NFL Hall of Fame?
Who do you think will be the most sought after NFL free agent this coming off season? Do you think pass rushers Ezekiel Ansah or Demarcus Lawrence will be hot commodities? Or could a running back looking for a full-time work load like Latavius Murray or Mark Ingram be a guy teams target? Maybe you think that Golden Tate is the best wide receiver on the free agent market and he’ll be the player to cash in.
Of course their will be players added to this list as teams make adjustments to their rosters, but right no these payers look like they could be some of the top players on the upcoming free agent market.
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