{"id":470728,"date":"2026-02-10T14:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/470728\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T14:12:09","slug":"lebron-james-calls-out-lakers-were-not-a-championship-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/470728\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James calls out Lakers: We’re not ‘a championship team’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> in the same sentence with the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>?<\/p>\n

LeBron James<\/a> wasn’t having it.<\/p>\n

With NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic<\/a> and reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> both sitting out due to injuries, the host Lakers and Thunder relied on their supporting casts Monday night to play a Thunder-style physical game featuring 52 combined free throws.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

After Oklahoma City prevailed, 119-110, James was blunt when answering a question about what separates the Lakers (32-19) from the NBA-leading Thunder (40-13).<\/p>\n

“You want me to compare us to them? That’s a championship team right there. We’re not,” James told reporters. “We can’t sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can. That’s why they won a championship.”<\/p>\n

James scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half for the Lakers, whose three-game winning streak ended with another ineffective defensive performance.<\/p>\n

The Lakers led, 99-98, with 7:24 remaining before the Thunder closed the game on a 21-11 run keyed by Jalen Williams<\/a>, who scored 10 points in the game’s final five minutes.<\/p>\n

“I think when you play the best teams — and Oklahoma City is clearly — you know, you have to have a really high level of effort and you have to have a really high level of execution,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “It’s got to be both, and I thought for the most part our effort was fantastic. In key stretches of the game, our execution wasn’t great.”<\/p>\n

Williams finished with 23 points in his return from a 10-game injury absence for the Thunder, who are favored to repeat as champs.<\/p>\n

Gilgeous-Alexander’s abdominal injury will keep him out through the All-Star Game this weekend in Inglewood, California. The Lakers haven’t determined how long they’ll be without Doncic, who missed his second straight game with a mild hamstring strain.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers in the same sentence with the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder? LeBron James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-470728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}