Billy Mac and Stu Lantz came up with yet another hilarious call for a LeBron James play last night. The Lakers eventually lost the game to the Pistons.
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It’s a mark of how much James is admired by the NBA community that announcers can joke about him stat-padding in a live game. The Lakers have one of the best commentating crews in all of sports. Bill MacDonald and Stu Lantz are legends behind the microphone and will follow Chick Hearn to the rafters.
They added another of those moments in the game today. At the 5:47 minute mark of this highlight reel, you can see the play in question. James went around his defender and tried to lay the ball in, but to no avail. He got 2 offensive boards after that, laying it back in on his 3rd try of the possession.
Billy Mac’s play-by-play call went as follows: “LeBron James – gets his own shot and misses. Gets his own shot and scores. Just padding those stats! 67-63”
These were incidentally James’ final points of the night. LeBron missed every single shot attempt after this.
Fans react to LeBron James and the Lakers losing to the lowly Pistons
The Lakers succumbed to a blowout loss after conceding a 19-2 run in the 4th quarter. They were so ragged and disjointed on offense that they couldn’t get a single shot to fall for 7 minutes or so in the final period.
Marc Gasol had a 0-point night despite playing heavy minutes by his standards. Montrezl Harrell was outplayed thoroughly tonight. Anthony Davis was out with a quad contusion, putting all the more pressure on the Lakers’ wings.
Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were hot trash on the night as well. It was definitely their worst team performance of the season as a whole, and their first loss to a team below .500 this year. This also consigned them to their second straight loss – the first occurrence of this sort in 2020-21.
