

James added four rebounds and four assists, and he also got a technical foul after a physical exchange with Gordon when the two got locked up on the Lakers’ end of the court. He took a strange fallaway jumper that missed badly with 26 seconds left, and his final drive to the hoop was thwarted by Denver’s Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon at the buzzer.īut the first half was vintage LeBron: He made 11 of his 13 shots and hit four 3-pointers without a miss in the highest-scoring playoff half of his career, which began in 2003 and has included four NBA championships. He added 10 more in the second while playing nearly the entire half of a do-or-die game against the top-seeded Nuggets.īut James had only nine points on 4-of-12 shooting in the second half, and he missed two chances to score in the final minute. In his NBA-record 282nd career playoff game, James dropped 21 points in a dynamic first quarter in Game 4.

I’ve done it a lot, and it’s not fun to me to not be able to be a part of getting to the (NBA) Finals.” “You know, I don’t get a kick out of making a conference (finals) appearance. “I don’t like to say it’s a successful year, because I don’t play for anything besides winning championships at this point in my career,” James said. That didn’t matter much to James, whose frustration broke through at several points after Game 4. James missed a month of the regular season with a foot injury down the stretch, but he returned with a series of stellar playoff performances while the Lakers knocked off second-seeded Memphis and eliminated defending champion Golden State.
