The Los Angeles Lakers took down the New Orleans Pelicans in the Play-in tournament, keeping their championship aspirations alive for this season. The Lakers will now go on to face the Denver Nuggets in the first round of playoffs, who have won all the last 7 matchups against Purple and Gold. It was evident that analyst Skip Bayless will express his opinion on the game, that too in his usual fashion of taking a dig at LeBron James.
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As much animosity there is between Skip Bayless and LeBron, the former was rooting for The King and the Lakers in the Play-in tournament as they went up against the New Orleans Pelicans. After Los Angeles advanced to the playoffs following their win over the Pelicans, securing their spot in the postseason, Skip Bayless went to X(formerly Twitter) to announce a rematch of the West Finals in the first round.
“Now we get the West finals in the first round. Winner plays the Celtics.”
According to the 72-year-old’s prediction, the winner of this first-round series will meet Boston Celtics in the finals. For the unaware aware, the Los Angeles Lakers faced off against the Denver Nuggets last year in the Western Conference Finals. The series, however, was over in a hurry as the Nuggets went on to sweep the Lakers, 4-0.
Now that the Lakers will be facing the Nuggets in the first round, this marks as a Western Conference Finals rematch between these two teams, in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
But this wasn’t the only tweet Skip Bayless had shared on X. Prior to the Western Conference Finals rematch tweet, the veteran NBA analyst was confident that the Lakers had a good shot at defeating the Nuggets this year.
“The Lakers are better than the Nuggets. Now they have an early-round opportunity to PLAY better than the Nuggets … before LeBron “runs out of gas.”
Skip Bayless downright stated that the Los Angeles Lakers were a better team than the Denver Nuggets, despite the difference between their team records and the amount of wins and losses they’ve had to suffer this season. Bayless’ tweet may simply mean that the Lakers have an opportunity to give it their all in the first round as opposed to how they had played in the Conference finals last year after having to battle two teams that took a lot for the Lakers to overcome.
It seems like Skip Bayless could not help but take a dig at LeBron James in the end with his tweet. Granted that James has been playing exceptional basketball this season as well, Bayless may not be wrong after all.
James tends to save some energy in the tank for the playoffs. And last season, he did seem a little winded by the time they faced off the Denver Nuggets in the conference finals. So, now that the Lakers will be facing them in the first round, the team will have fresh legs under them and a more energetic approach as well. This mainly concerns LeBron James, who has been the catalyst for the Lakers this season. While Bayless’ dig seems like him taking just another shot at James, he isn’t wrong entirely as The King may run out of gas if they end up reaching the conference finals.
