{"id":685467,"date":"2026-05-22T02:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T02:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685467\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T02:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T02:30:08","slug":"lebron-james-lakers-were-out-talented-by-thunder-in-nba-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685467\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James: Lakers were ‘out-talented’ by Thunder in NBA playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going into their Western Conference semifinal series against the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>, the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> were thought to have no real chance of winning. Sure enough, they got swept, and perhaps the only surprise was how relatively uncompetitive the series as a whole was.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles<\/a> fought hard for stretches of the first three games, only to get run over after halftime in each contest. Game 4 was the only game in which it was truly competitive, and it still fell by a final score of 115-110.<\/p>\n

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On a new episode<\/a> of his “Mind the Game” podcast, LeBron James<\/a> explained that, in his view, the Lakers got beaten by the Thunder, the defending NBA champions, on sheer talent.<\/p>\n

“I have the passion and the admiration to hoist a Larry O’Brien Trophy up every single year, but I also have a realization of what particular team I have been a part of in that particular year,” James said. “And understanding this year, we fought and we played to the maximum ability of our team. But ultimately, if we’re being completely honest, we were out-talented.<\/p>\n

“We were not outworked. They didn\u2019t out-physical us. They didn\u2019t outsmart us. I feel like we were just out-talented by OKC. They just possess so much more talent.”<\/p>\n

The Lakers were still reeling from the loss of MVP candidate Luka Doncic<\/a>, who had suffered what turned out to be a season-ending hamstring strain on April 2. Without him, they lacked that game-breaking superstar who could not only go on monstrous hot streaks, manipulate defenses and hit the open man but also give his teammates tremendous confidence.<\/p>\n

James averaged 23.3 points, six rebounds and 5.8 assists a game in that second-round series, and Austin Reaves<\/a> had a couple of big scoring performances, but it wasn’t nearly enough.<\/p>\n

When Doncic suffered his injury, L.A. had won 16 of its last 18 games and was looking like a dark-horse contender. Ironically, that injury occurred against the same Oklahoma City<\/a> squad that swept L.A. out of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: LeBron James: Lakers were ‘out-talented’ by Thunder in NBA playoffs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Going into their Western Conference semifinal series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Los Angeles Lakers were thought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[45842,49,48,251198,2327,1522,8231,12887,459,9585,3555,82,251197],"class_list":["post-685467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-austin-reaves","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-larry-o39brien-trophy","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-sports","tag-western-conference-semifinal-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685467","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=685467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}