Photo : Sean M. Haffey ( ( Getty

This has been an awfully shocking season for LeBron James and his Lakers, and it’s only getting worse, as L.A. currently sits 6.5 games out of the playoffs, having lost eight of their last ten. Still, this team hadn’t fully packed it in yet, or at least “sources” told Shams Charania on Wednesday that LeBron would keep trying:

This much is certain, though: James understood this would be a process entering the season and that it takes time to build a contender, sources said, and he’ll always remain a pro and play hard through it all.


Last night’s utterly horrendous 16-point loss to the Nuggets must have changed his point of view. Yahoo’s Chris Haynes is reporting that the Lakers are going to start prepping LeBron for offseason storage, limiting his playing time and letting him save himself for more important games far down the road.


Here’s what he says:

I was told, now that the Lakers are almost out of playoff contention, that there was a conversation had between LeBron James’s trainer and the front office, and they came to the conclusion that moving forward, LeBron James will play a minute restriction of 28 to 32 minutes, and possibly on back-to-backs, depending on how LeBron James feels, that he might sit out one of those (games). There’s 17 games left in the season. There’s three back-to-backs remaining. ... Everybody understood, everybody’s in agreement, so looking forward, it won’t be necessarily a shut down LeBron, it’ll be kind of a cooldown for LeBron.

So that basically concludes a Lakers season that started with promise, went off the rails when LeBron got hurt, and reached rock bottom when Carmelo Anthony wouldn’t even come hang with them. LeBron’s going to go for a second bottle of Cabernet every night from now until Anthony Davis shows up.