Luke Walton Responds To LeBron’s Comments On Teammates

The Los Angeles Lakers lost the game to the New Orleans Pelicans, and LeBron James was sort of frustrated and disappointed. He questioned the team’s sense of urgency, and said he was never accustomed to losing games. Head coach Luke Walton responded to these comments.

“How many know what’s at stake if you’ve never been there?” LeBron asked rhetorically of qualifying for the playoffs. “I’m playing devil’s advocate, you know? It’s kind of a fine line when you talk about that, because when you’ve never been there or know what it takes to actually shoot for something like that, sometimes you’re afraid to get uncomfortable.” Is Walton aware of this?

“So you got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” LeBron added. “So I’m not saying that’s what we are as a whole. It kind of looks that way at times, that sometimes we’re afraid to be uncomfortable and kind of get out of our comfort zone and kind of, you know, have that sense of urgency from the jump, and not be afraid to actually go out and fail to succeed. So, I mean we have, what? Twenty-three games left. We’ll see what happens.” 

If you ask the head coach, he will say that experience plays an important role in the process.

“Experience is the best way to learn. It is new for some of the guys. But I expect us for the majority of this time to play with the urgency and the will that it takes. …”

” It’s definitely something as a group, being a new team together and relying on a lot of young players, that’s new. We’re learning. …It won’t be perfect, but we’ll continue to come out and get better and we’ll see if we can’t make some noise down the stretch.”

Let’s see if Walton is right about this.