LeBron James noticed Matthew Stafford courtside and knew he needed to do one thing.
Fifty-four factors later, with the sport nonetheless ongoing, he turned to the Rams quarterback to inform him so.
“I can’t have you ever within the constructing and never placed on a present,” James mentioned in a remark picked up by ESPN’s microphones.
In the end, James completed with 56 factors, his highest-scoring sport as a Laker, to hoist his staff to a 14-point comeback and 124-116 win over the Warriors that snapped a four-game shedding streak.
“Our guys have been following me off the ground tonight going into the locker room they usually requested me, ‘How does it really feel to attain 56?’ ” James instructed reporters. “I mentioned, ‘Proper now, I don’t give a rattling concerning the 56. I’m simply glad we bought a win.’ That’s simply actually the very first thing that got here to thoughts.”
The Lakers are nonetheless simply 28-35, in ninth place hoping to climb out of a play-in spot within the West and lacking Anthony Davis. However a feel-good win was badly wanted after the Clippers blew them out on Thursday.
James grew to become the oldest participant in NBA historical past to attain greater than 55 factors with 10 rebounds and is one in all simply 4 gamers to have scored 50 or extra in a sport previous age 37, per ESPN.
“You bought to have the ability to alter, man,” James mentioned. “And for those who can’t have a progress mindset on how yow will discover methods to get higher with the staff, then you definitely’ll get left behind. I’m not saying I’ve modified my sport in any means. I’ve all the time simply wished to have a sport that matches any model of play or any period. I really feel like my sport would match any period in basketball historical past from the time that the nice James Naismith created it.”
