LeBron James has his views on a compressed season and the short turnaround be backed up by his Los Angeles Lakers teammate, Kyle Kuzma.
LeBron James took to Twitter to unleash a powerful, multi-tweet rant about how injuries ruined the 2020-21 NBA season. This rant came after the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated in the first round by the Phoenix Suns and injuries were starting to pile up in the NBA Playoffs. It felt as though every series had an injured superstar.
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LeBron James called out the NBA for going ahead with the season after merely a 2-month offseason following the Los Angeles Lakers 2020 NBA title win. He even said that he told league officials to start the season sometime in January and not December as teams who were in the ‘Bubble’ for longer periods of time would find it hard to cope with such a short turnaround.
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Sure enough, this postseason has seen more injury-riddled superstars than any other season in recent memory. The ‘King’ himself took months to recover from a turned ankle and was not 100% going into the postseason.
Kyle Kuzma expresses the same opinions as LeBron James when it comes to the short turnaround.
Kyle Kuzma managed to come out of the dreaded 2020-21 NBA season unscathed and perfectly healthy. This however, didn’t stop him from aligning his views on the compressed season with LeBron James as he too does not agree with the NBA starting everything back up as quickly as they did.
“If you look at all the teams that were in the Bubble and played long, they had a lot of injuries. Look at Denver with Jamal Murray, even looking at the Heat this year how many injuries they had, along with us too. Having Anthony Davis and LeBron James, KCP out a few games, Caruso out, a lot of people missed games and I contribute that to the Bubble.”
Yes, torn ligaments and ACLs can be attributed to having less rest and getting back into action quicker than recommended. However, turning ankles or injuring your wrist are things that happen directly because of something that happened in-game. Blaming Giannis’s hyperextended knee or Trae Young’s turned ankle on a short turnaround does make any sense.
Regardless, playing an NBA game is difficult no matter the circumstances. LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma are right in wanting more rest for their fellow NBA players.
