Skip to main content

Lakers' LeBron James says he wants to play with Warriors' Stephen Curry: 'I love everything about that guy'


 


Though the so-called superteam that the Los Angeles Lakers built this season didn't exactly yield the results they expected and James Harden brought an abrupt end to the Big Three of the once championship-favorite Brooklyn Nets, the practice of superstar NBA players joining forces isn't likely to stop any time soon. If the goal is to win a title, surrounding yourself with the best possible teammates increases your odds more than virtually any other factor.


With LeBron James taking heat for the acquisition of Russell Westbrook that led to the Lakers officially failing to make the play-in this season in one of the biggest disappointments, odds-wise at least, in recent NBA history, it's only natural to speculate on the changes Los Angeles will make to its roster before next season. And if James feels the Lakers haven't turned themselves into a championship contender by the end of the summer, would he contemplate a trade demand? Unlikely, sure. But we've seen crazy things happen in the NBA.


This line of thinking makes James' comments in an upcoming episode of "The Shop" fertile ground for speculation and rumormongering. When asked who he would most like to play with in the NBA, James' first answer was his son, Bronny James, currently a junior in high school. When asked about which current NBA player he'd like to team up with, however, the elder James got the Twitter wheels turning.


"In today's game, sh-- there's some m-----f------ in today's game, but Steph Curry," James said. "Steph Curry's the one that I wanna play with for sure, in today's game. ... I love everything about that guy. Lethal. When he get out his car, you better guard him right from the moment he pulls up to the arena. ... You might wanna guard him when he get out of the bed. Swear to god. He's serious."


You can see the full discussion below, in which James also names Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Penny Hardaway as players he would have liked to join forces with (James' comments about Curry start around the 1:04 mark, and the clip contains explicit language).



Anyone remotely following the NBA over the past several seasons knows of James' affinity for Curry. Having battled each other in four consecutive NBA Finals from 2015-2018, LeBron is more than familiar with Curry's exploits and how his shooting, off-ball movement, passing and competitiveness have affected winning.


James has drafted Curry to his All-Star team in each of the last two seasons, saying that he "loved every single second" of playing with Curry for the first time in 2021. Also a member of Team LeBron this past February, Curry set an NBA All-Star record with 16 3-pointers, leading to more praise from his team captain.


Curry responded to James' comments from "The Shop" on Wednesday.


"Well he got his wish. He was the captain and he's picked me for the last two All-Star Games. So I don't know if that suffices, but I'm good right now," Curry said on 95.7 The Game. "Whenever you get the interest or curiosity of what it would be like to play with arguably the MVP kinda caliber dude like he is, one of the greatest of all-time, cool. That's amazing. We all can live in that fantasy world."


James' comments about wanting to play with Curry will undoubtedly lead to hours of use for the trade machine, with fans trying to find a way to get LeBron to the Warriors, but to say that outcome is unlikely would be a dramatic understatement. That doesn't rule out an eventual partnership between Curry and James down the road, however, and if that came to fruition we'd be watching two of the greatest and most talented basketball players of all time take the stage together.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Deep: At long last, Nikola Jokic's Nuggets can envision getting to the top of the mountain

  Jamal Murray tore his ACL on April 12, 2021. Leading up to that night, he'd been playing at an All-NBA level for two months: In a 25-game stretch, Murray averaged 24.1 points on .509/.459/.935 shooting splits, 4.2 rebounds and 5.2 assists. He was even more efficient than he was in the bubble playoffs, and his defense had improved, too. Murray only got to play with Aaron Gordon, the Denver Nuggets' big trade-deadline addition, for five games. They won them all except the one in which Murray got injured. In 110 minutes, their new starting five scored slightly more efficiently than any iteration of the Kevin Durant-era death lineup in Golden State and defended like a top-five team. Two Nikola Jokic MVP awards later, Murray is back. So is Michael Porter Jr., who signed a five-year extension about a year ago and needed back surgery nine games into the 2020-21 season. The Nuggets remember how easily everything slid into place with Gordon in the mix. Newcomer Kentavious Caldwell-Pop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Klay Thompson to sit out Warriors preseason games in Japan as Kerr says he needs more time to ramp-up

  Klay Thompson may have returned healthy to the Golden State Warriors last season, but the scars from his two missed seasons are still quite visible. The Warriors played their first of two preseason games against the Washington Wizards on Friday and will play another on Sunday, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Thompson will not be playing at all during the trip to Japan. "Just feel more comfortable giving him a little more of a ramp up," Kerr said before Friday's victory over Washington. "He's just not quite ready to play at this point just based on where, you know, we're so early in camp. We just want to be safe and make sure he gets a good ramp-up before he plays in games." Typically, so little time to ramp up wouldn't be a problem for a veteran in a preseason context. The games tend to be so low-impact and demand so few minutes out of a team's best players that they can safely jog through them. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green played 1...
Post a Comment
Read more

LeBron James says he has 'no relationship' with Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  It's not a matter of if LeBron James passes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the No. 1 spot on the NBA's all-time scoring list, it's when. James sits just 1,326 points away from passing the Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Lakers legend, a milestone that should happen at some point this season given James is still performing at peak levels and is coming off a year in which he averaged over 30 points a night. If he averages around the same amount of points as he did a season ago for the Lakers, James could break the record somewhere in the middle of the season, assuming he stays healthy. It's a highly anticipated moment heading into the season, but in regards to LeBron's thoughts about and his relationship with Abdul-Jabbar, he didn't have much to say on the matter. Following the Lakers first preseason game Monday night, a reporter asked James what his thoughts were on the Lakers legend and if the two had any relationship, to which LeBron gave a very short answer. "No...
Post a Comment
Read more