{"id":131445,"date":"2025-03-29T09:08:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T13:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=131445"},"modified":"2025-03-29T09:08:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T13:08:51","slug":"lakers-lebron-james-health-kendrick-perkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/29\/lakers-lebron-james-health-kendrick-perkins\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Analyst Argues LeBron James’s Health Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0<\/span>Los Angeles Lakers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0have missed the mark over their past 10 games, going 4-6 and dropping their last three of four. The Lakers welcomed back\u00a0<\/span>LeBron James<\/span><\/a> into the lineup, but his health status is a cause for concern for some. Since his return from his injury, James has averaged below 20 points per game, and the Lakers have come up short on the defensive end of the floor more often than not. As a result,\u00a0<\/span>Los Angeles is going through a significant slump at a crucial time of the season<\/span><\/a>\u00a0where <\/span>they cannot afford to give up games<\/span><\/a>\u00a0if you consider their place in the standings and playoff seeding implications. As for LeBron, who is coming off maybe one of his worst games of the season, is it fair to question where he is health-wise? He certainly looks healthy. However, ESPN’s\u00a0<\/span>Kendrick Perkins<\/span><\/a>\u00a0believes otherwise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NBA Analyst Argues LeBron James’s Health Status<\/h2>\n

ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins Cites “Sources” Regarding the Health of LA Lakers’ LeBron James<\/h3>\n

LeBron’s performance against the Chicago Bulls earlier this week wasn’t his best of the year, and he even admitted to his mental gaffs in a late-game situation that compromised the <\/span>Lakers<\/span> chances of winning the game. A blown coverage and lazy in-bound pass eventually led to\u00a0<\/span>Josh Giddey<\/span><\/a>‘s Hail Mary half-court shot to ice the game by two points (119-117). The Lakers had experienced buzzer-beater excitement the night before in Indiana, but LeBron was on the winning side of that one. This time around in Chicago, he was on the losing side.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During a debate on how and why the Lakers dropped the game against the Bulls and if there is cause for concern in the future, Perkins regarded LeBron’s health.\u00a0<\/span>Stephen A. Smith questioned Perkins’s assessment on\u00a0<\/span><\/a>First Take<\/span><\/a><\/em>\u00a0that LeBron is only 70% healthy right now<\/span><\/a>. Perkins responded by citing his sources [7:40 mark]<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“\u201cLeBron James is not healthy. I think he\u2019s probably about 70 to 75 percent, so we are talking about at a time when you are supposed to be peaking heading into the off-season, and the Lakers are trending backwards.\u201d <\/em>Stephen A. then questioned Perkins’s\u00a0assessment, to which Perkins responded, “<\/i>I’m telling you, my sources are telling me that he’s not healthy, okay?<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Stephen A. pointed out why there was any need to question James’s health, considering he returned to play a few games ago after missing two weeks. Perkins’s “sources” statement sounded shaky at best and unconvincing. Who are his sources? Well, that’s a valid question. Perkins was scrambling to respond to Stephen A., which might beg viewers to question him and his sources.<\/p>\n

The King’s Health Isn’t LA’s Problem<\/h3>\n

Perkins’s unconvincing take is a head-scratcher and sounds made-up. Nevertheless, suppose LeBron is only 70 to 75 percent healthy now; it’s not why the Lakers are falling backward. JJ Redick has repeatedly lamented his team’s inability to defend the transition all season. They continue to have transition problems nightly. Turnovers have also doomed the Lakers\u2014another area they haven’t been able to clean up. The most concerning is their sub-par defense, which is causing the bulk of LA’s troubling play of late.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the new year, the Lakers were a top defensive team for over a month, but that has swiftly dwindled, and defense is why the Lakers are losing more than winning. The Lakers are<\/em> in trouble unless they can re-find their collective connectivity on that end of the floor. They’re not a team that can afford to have defensive lapses or take defensive assignments off. They aren’t constructed to overcome that, and LeBron’s health has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Los Angeles Lakers\u00a0have missed the mark over their past 10 games, going 4-6 and dropping their last three of four. The Lakers welcomed back\u00a0LeBron James into the lineup, but his health status is a cause for concern for some. Since his return from his injury, James has averaged below 20 points per game, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":131447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1608,62],"tags":[4276,3215,4675],"class_list":["post-131445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lakers","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-josh-giddey","tag-kendrick-perkins","tag-lebro-james"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131445"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131456,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131445\/revisions\/131456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}