Cleveland caught quite a few stray bullets during Magic Johnson’s presser early today. LeBron has really been racking up the minutes lately, while not getting any younger at 33-years old, and Magic basically doesn’t want the Lakers to create a reincarnation of the Cavs:
We are trying to make sure that we watch his minutes but also that we don’t run everything through him because now it is Cleveland all over again and we don’t want that…
We want to get up and down.
Magic says he wants LeBron as fresh as possible for the playoffs and he believes the Lakers can lean on the younger guys in the meantime:
We got a lot of ballhandlers so we feel we won’t overuse him in terms of his ballhandling and also every play has to run through him. I think we got proven scorers — Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram … and then when you have two point guards like Ball and Rondo, we don’t have to have LeBron having the ball in his hands all the time.
Flip the page to hear Magic explaining how the Lakers are on the path to be Cleveland all over again, and the Lakers don’t want any part of that.