He may not be the same player he once was, but even at 40 years old LeBron James continues to find ways to put the Los Angeles Lakers on his back.
Except this time even it wasn’t enough to will the Lakers to victory as they fell 100-97 to the Charlotte Hornets at Crypto.com Arena.
James, who did not feature in the NBA All-Star game for the first time in 21 years after pulling out with a lingering foot injury, was initially questionable for Thursday’s game before being cleared to play.

And the Lakers superstar looked anything but restricted by the foot issue, feeling it early as he set the tone with a monstrous dunk and back-to-back triples to take a 10-6 lead.

That was after Australian Josh Green made his presence felt in the opening minutes of the game, initially missing a 3-point attempt on the first possession but then making up for it by forcing a turnover and later flying for an offensive rebound after a Nick Smith Jr. miss.

Green converted that hustle play into points for the Hornets, who led 6-2 before James scored eight-straight points.

Turnovers were the issue early on for the Lakers and that continued to be the case by the end of the first quarter, when they led 28-21 despite turning it over nine times.

The Lakers were largely able to stay afloat on offence due to their shooting efficiency and when that dipped in the second quarter, they were able to clean up turnovers.

Boomers “gotta do whatever they can”

It meant Los Angeles took a 48-37 lead into halftime. While things were starting to look comfortable for the Lakers, that took a quick turn in the third quarter as a pair of technical fouls following a non-call saw Austin Reaves tossed from the game.

The Hornets went on to outscore the Lakers 32-18 in the third quarter on the way to a 69-66 lead, while a pair of LaMelo Ball triples pushed that difference out to nine points early in the fourth.

That was when James started to take over, first dishing it out to Rui Hachimura who made the 3-pointer before adding another two buckets himself to make it 75-73.

James later added another seven points in the space of one minute, including an emphatic dunk that even son Bronny couldn’t believe, to tie up the game as the Hornets kept the scoreboard ticking over.

At that point, the game appeared destined to go down to the final seconds and that ended up being the case, even after a Ball floater put the Hornets up 98-94 with 14 seconds left.

A deep triple from James gave the Lakers a chance and after two successful Ball free throws, he had two more good looks to send the game to overtime but couldn’t make either.

James led the way for the Lakers with 26 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds while Luka Doncic had 14 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists but only made five of his 18 field goal attempts while turning the ball over six times.

Curry wins All-Star MVP

Miles Bridges had 29 points for Charlotte to go with five steals, while Ball scored 27 points.

Speaking after the game, Redick said the Lakers “competed” and “played extremely hard” but added that poor execution was ultimately their undoing.

“I don’t think it was just Austin (getting ejected). That certainly hurt us… overall I think we played 39-44 minutes of pretty poor offence,” he said.

“Some of that is to be expected, some of it was sloppiness, some of it was poor execution, some of it was poor spacing.

“The reason I’m not going to read too much into it is because I think our guys competed tonight and played extremely hard.

“… I thought our effort and competitive spirit was good enough to win. Just we were really poor offensively for 90 per cent of the game.”