Lance Stephenson seemingly took pride in being labelled a ‘LeBron James stopper’ as he calls the defensive assignment a great challenge.
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LeBron James has faced off against some of the greatest defenders the NBA has had to offer in these past two decades. He’s gone against mobile big-men like Kevin Garnett and athletic forwards like Kawhi Leonard, on the defensive end of the floor. He’s had to learn over time on how to deal with such defensive prowess but knowing ‘The King’, he eventually did.
Someone who doesn’t get talked about all too often when considering players who could defend LeBron James well, is Lance Stephenson. The reason behind this is because, well, Lance couldn’t defend him. To put analogize it as smoothly as possible, Lance Stephenson was to LeBron James as PJ Tucker was to Kevin Durant in the 2021 ECSF.
Lance would make the 4x champ work as hard as ever on offense, to hopefully drain his energy out, but eventually not be able to handle him. Same thing happened to Tucker, with KD dropping 50 points on him but doing so in an extremely difficult manner.
Lance Stephenson on defending LeBron James.
In a recent interview, amidst his attempt to return to the NBA for the first time since the 2018-19 season, Lance Stephenson talked about being labeled a ’LeBron James stopper’.
“It was a great challenge. My teammates said, ‘Pick up on him, don’t let him get nothing easy, we’re gonna have your back.’ And I knew from the jump that they weren’t just gonna have me playing one-on-one with him. That’s what helped me a lot because I knew if I pressured him, I knew 4 other guys were going to be there for me.”
Lance and LeBron James have had a storied past with one another, with them facing each other in the Playoffs during their Heat-Pacers days in the early 2010s, to becoming teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers.
