By now you probably heard that Playoff LeBron has been “activated”. Those were his words not mine

That fact has apparently shifted James’ time frame. He told reporters on Thursday that he’s leaving the All-Star break already in high gear, a level that’s usually saved for later in the season and the playoffs. “It’s been activated,” James told reporters. “My level of intensity has to be [high], unfortunately for me, because I don’t like to do it at such an early time. But it’s been activated.”

First off, a moment of silence for LeBron that he’s going to have to start trying a little earlier than he would have hoped. Nobody should be forced to go through those type of hardships. Given how bad the Lakers were with LeBron out of the lineup, they find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Sitting 3 games out of the final playoff spot, they have the 9th hardest strength of schedule and are at real risk of missing the playoffs. You know who that’s bad for? Not just the Lakers, but the NBA. They haven’t had to worry about a postseason without LeBron since his first two years in the league which was more than 15 years ago. Do you think they are just going to sit by and let the Lakers, one of the biggest markets and historic franchises in the league miss the playoffs? Wake up. It’s pretty obvious what’s happening here, you have LeBron coming out and saying his Zero Dark 23 bullshit is starting early, planting that seed as to why the Lakers may turn things around, but to me that’s just a distraction.

From what? Well, guess who is the officiating crew for their first game back against a tough HOU team

Weird, Scott Foster. That names sounds familiar because of some sort of fixing games conspiracy. I could be wrong but I’m not. Let’s look at the facts, the Rockets are essentially winless in Scott Foster games, and home teams win 67% of the time Foster is assigned to that game. That’s the second highest winning percentage of any official who has worked as many games as Foster has. Where is this game being played? Los Angeles? What a coincidence! If you don’t think there’s history there you’re crazy. This is nothing new

I can’t think of a better way to help kick off Playoff LeBron than to give him a clearly crooked official and a home heavy crew. It’s not just Foster though, Courtney Kirkland has a 52% home winning percentage as a crew member, and Michael Smith has a 71% home team winning percentage. I mean the NBA isn’t even trying to hide what they’re doing here!

At least throw one road heavy official in there to not make it clear as day what the plan is here. It’s obviously smart for the league to pull a stunt like this, they NEED the Lakers to make the playoffs. Even if they sneak in as the 8th seed, you’re telling me they couldn’t sell LeBron vs GS in the first round? Honestly we should have seen something like this coming, and I almost have to respect them doing it literally the first night back on national television. That’s how you know they don’t give a single fuck about being shady as long as it potentially helps their bottom line.

This game was already going to be intense given it ‘s the first meeting between Chris Paul and Rondo since this little incident

and now everyone’s going to be looking for obvious shady pro Lakers calls given who the crew is tonight. Feels like a 12-16 LeBron FTA kinda night. Maybe a key no call on an obvious James Harden drawn foul or something like that, you know there’s going to be something with this group. It’s what they do.

When you think about it, it’s sad really that such a great franchise like the Lakers is forced to ask the league to help them stack the deck like this, but when your young talent proves they sorta stink LeBron is running out of options.

Tonight, we’re all Rockets fans.