Can LeBron James win the scoring title this year?
LeBron James will be sitting out the last two games of the Los Angeles Lakers for the season due to an ankle injury that he sustained last month.
There will be no more NBA action for LeBron James this season. The Los Angeles Lakers have announced that he will sit out the two remaining games due to the ankle injury that he suffered on March 27 against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Los Angeles said that after further evaluation of his ankle, they deemed it wise for the 37-year-old to no longer play for the rest of the team’s matches, so that he could heal and rehabilitate more completely.
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Lakers eliminated from playoff contention
The Lakers have already been kicked out of contention for the play-in tournament after losing to the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday. Their defeat had assured that the San Antonio Spurs would edge them out of tenth place in the Western Conference.
With no hope of reaching the NBA championship, James no longer had any goals to achieve with the team. However, being out of commission will have an effect on his accomplishments as an individual player.
LeBron close to clinching scoring title
He is in the running for the season’s scoring title, with an average score of 30.3 points in the 56 games he has played. He is second only to Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers who has an average of 30.4.
James could have made full use of his last two games to pull up that average and eclipse Embiid- something he can no longer do.
There is also the question of being qualified to win an end-of-season title. A player needs to play in 58 games to be eligible for the award, and James will be two games short.
If he were to win the title, he would have passed Michael Jordan’s record of being the oldest player to ever achieve this feat. Jordan received the award when he was 34, while James is now 37.
Even if he does not get earn this recognition, the Lakers star has undeniably delivered the numbers for the team in 2022, as his point average is the second-highest ever in his almost two-decade-long NBA career.
It’s too bad that even such a brilliant individual performance was not enough to carry the Lakers into the playoffs.