With LeBron James eclipsing Kareem’s mark, Lakers fans should take a moment to enjoy the moment

It makes sense that the only thing here in Los Angeles with the real power to temporarily freeze and silence all drama created by a lebron james The team in disarray is indeed an act of greatness by LeBron James.

This season, the lakers have emitted a banal basketball buzz—a low frequency of frustration sent by so much mediocrity and anguish—the Russell Westbrook drama Anthony Davis‘ now in the past, but still shocking stretch of injury. Future first round draft picks that will or will not be traded. LeBron’s constant, passive-aggressive attempts to force his team’s hand in the matter, prompting a rival GM to tell CBS Sports: “Everybody knows he wants this pick to be traded for help; he should do what everybody would do and have the guts to do it. say it out loud.”

This LeBron-led Lakers team is 24-28, a lowly 13th in the tight Western Conference, is a team of possibilities, like so many others that swing between the lottery spot, the play-in or the full playoff, is surrounded by the noise of a King James team that falls below its supposed royal standard.

But that noise, at least for a moment, is about to stop. Because LeBron’s lifelong pursuit of Michael Jordan is about to get overloaded by chasing another all-time great.

Just 89 points from now, as you probably know, LeBron will reign as the N.B.Athe top scorer of all time. This moment will change the Lakers from a team of disappointments to another that will stretch and touch the pinnacle of hoops greatness.

For at least one night, banality will be exchanged for bravado. Frustration for the party. A sense of mediocrity, at best, for a moment of real, well-deserved basketball glory.

Will it be enough freedom from angst, enough joy and positivity, to spark a Lakers revival and a run from now until the end of the season? May be. Maybe not. An NBA championship likely won’t follow.

But a reminder of a feeling: the purple and gold sitting at the center of the basketball universe, of the game’s most talked-about team emanating again from downtown LA, of the entire NBA directing its eyes often tired and jealous of the Lakers… – will rise again, if only temporarily.

Winning, of course, is great. But so is watching a great Laker hold sports history in his hands.

Casually but confidently, Lakers sources speculate that, no matter what happens, LeBron will and was always going to break that record under the rafters where No. 33 resides. Now he’s poised, at his current scoring rate, to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387 points at home next week.

The Lakers organization hopes their star can put up enough points in the next two games in Indiana and New Orleans to ensure that Kareem’s mark is eclipsed at home against Oklahoma City next Tuesday or, more likely, two days later in a nationally televised game against Milwaukee, which is Kareem’s original NBA team and the club of Buckscurrent star, Giannis Antetokounmpowho will oppose LeBron as the other All-Star Game captain later this month.

That passing torch will come with a much-needed break from what has been a long season and, for a moment, a brief respite from so much noise.

Russ just “having fun” unplugged for LeBron? Fix it later. Brutal roster construction? He doesn’t care about history. AD-as-Humpty-Dumpty anxiety? Worry about it later. The trade? Not even they can blow the whistle (or not whistle) in this case. What LeBron is about to accomplish is truly, absolutely amazing.

The Lakers, their fans, and the rest of us can enjoy this moment while we wait to see what will happen six weeks, or six months, from LeBron’s 38,388th point.

There’s precedence for that, for some great Laker magic to weave out of an otherwise disappointing season.

On April 13, 2016, the Lakers’ 17-game winning streak came to a merciful end. I was at Staples Center last night, Kobe Bryant’s last, and any jokes or skepticism about that season evaporated as Kobe rolled back the years and racked up the points — 60 of them.

That was his mark, the number that as the game wore on felt inevitable, shot after shot, reminder after reminder of Kobe’s place in the game and how such a beautiful moment can blossom into the whole its splendor even in the most neglected garden of a season.

It was a goodbye, yes, and a very different one from what LeBron will claim when he becomes the NBA’s new all-time scoring standard bearer. But the effect can be the same: A disappointing Lakers season can still have a moment of admiration for an all-time great who connects with his all-time greatness, lighting up the arena of a way that losing teams rarely do.

That night, Kobe sat in a crowded postgame press conference, beaming with joy, beaming with greatness, surrounded by so many reporters mesmerized by what he had just done and how it encapsulated such a remarkable and brilliant career.

Something similar awaits us all next week. And once LeBron has done that, once he takes over the top spot, and the glow of what it means sweeps across the league for a historic night, perhaps a similar kind of joy can recalibrate this Lakers season. , no matter how much. the feeling lasts.