{"id":319342,"date":"2025-12-01T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/319342\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:17:08","slug":"lebron-james-reveals-most-dominant-player-hes-ever-played-against-in-nba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/319342\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James reveals most dominant player he’s ever played against in NBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

LeBron James reveals most dominant player he’s ever played against in NBA<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

LeBron James has played against a plethora of all-time greats over the course of his 23-year career in the NBA. James has done battle against the likes of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille\u00a0O\u2019Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, to name a few.<\/p>\n

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However, when it comes to the most dominant player he\u2019s ever squared off against, James had a somewhat surprising answer: Denver Nuggets<\/a> star center Nikola Jokic.<\/p>\n

LeBron James names Nikola Jokic as his most dominant opponent<\/p>\n

James and Jokic have played 37 games against each other<\/a> in the league, and during those matchups James has developed some serious respect for the three-time NBA MVP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will say this. There has not been a more dominant, complete player that I\u2019ve played against, in the sense of all the attributes,” James said of Jokic on a recent episode of his Mind the Game podcast, via Sports Illustrated<\/a>. “From the passing, to the shooting, to the rebounding, to the attention.<\/p>\n

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“There\u2019s nothing he cannot do on the offensive end,” he added. “Like, nothing at all. Nothing. You try to double him, he\u2019s going to make you pay. You try to play him single coverage, he\u2019s going to make you pay. He even brings the ball up the floor, they outlet the ball to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out of the 37 games that James and Jokic have played against each other, Jokic has walked away with a win 20 times, compared to 17 for games. 14 of those games took place in the postseason where Jokic has a 9-5 record against James. Jokic\u2019s Nuggets bested James\u2019 Lakers<\/a> in the Western Conference Finals in 2023 and in the first round of the playoffs in 2024. Meanwhile, James\u2019 Lakers toppled Jokic\u2019s Nuggets in the conference finals in 2020.<\/p>\n

James and Jokic will get to add some more matchups to their long history this season, as the Lakers and Nuggets are set to face each other three times this season. Denver will host L.A. on Jan. 20 and March 5, while the Lakers will host the Nuggets on March 14. Both teams are also in playoff position in the West at this point in the season, so another playoff matchup between the two stars is also possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James reveals most dominant player he’s ever played against in NBA originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,2898,141905,6695,141904,35474,5407,2327,459,5725,82,12467,56303],"class_list":["post-319342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-dominant-player","tag-kevin-durant","tag-kevin-garnett","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-lakers","tag-lebron-james","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-sports","tag-steph-curry","tag-tim-duncan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}