{"id":564518,"date":"2020-03-26T22:13:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T02:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=564518"},"modified":"2020-03-26T22:20:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T02:20:56","slug":"lebron-james-nba-shouldnt-go-straight-to-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/lebron-james-nba-shouldnt-go-straight-to-the-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James: NBA Shouldn&#8217;t Go &#8216;Straight to the Playoffs&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The NBA, should it eventually resume its currently suspended regular season, shouldn&#8217;t jump straight to the playoffs, according to <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/tag\/lebron-james\" target=\"_blank\">LeBron James<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It discredits the 60-plus games&#8221; already played in the battle for postseason seeding, says James.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">New story: LeBron reunited with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Rjeff24?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Rjeff24<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/channingfrye?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@channingfrye<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RealAClifton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RealAClifton<\/a> on Road Trippin to outline the challenges facing the league in returning to the court &amp; present an idea for a play-in round robin. Plus his training regimen, a Space Jam update and more <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FCP91taRQy\">https:\/\/t.co\/FCP91taRQy<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Dave McMenamin (@mcten) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mcten\/status\/1243236729756078085?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 26, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As the coronavirus global pandemic continues to wreck havoc, LeBron added that he&#8217;d be disappointed if players had to initially get back on the court without fans in the stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Per <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/28958201\/no-excitement-fans\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a><\/em> (via the &#8220;<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Road Trippin' Podcast (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/117-king-joins-rt-in-quarantine\/id1195897108?i=1000469612938\" target=\"_blank\">Road Trippin&#8217; Podcast<\/a><\/em>&#8220;): <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>&#8220;What is the word &#8216;sport&#8217; without &#8216;fan&#8217;?&#8221; James asked. &#8220;There&#8217;s no excitement. There&#8217;s no crying. There&#8217;s no joy. There&#8217;s no back-and-forth \u2026 That&#8217;s what also brings out the competitive side of the players to know that you&#8217;re going on the road in a hostile environment and yes, you&#8217;re playing against that opponent in front of you, but you really want to kick the fans&#8217; ass too.<\/em><\/p><p><em>&#8220;So to get back on the floor, I would love it. I&#8217;m not going to sit here and say nothing. Like, if it&#8217;s get out there and get back on the floor 5-on-5 \u2026 but like, we can do that in scrimmages. Let&#8217;s just go to each other&#8217;s practice facility, put out a camera, just scrimmage and livestream it. \u2026 I just don&#8217;t know how we can imagine a sporting event without fans. It&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s a weird dynamic.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><p><em>James also thinks a truncated regular-season finale of five to 10 games would be necessary before the playoff bracket.<\/em><\/p><p><em>&#8220;One thing you can&#8217;t just do is go straight to the playoffs,&#8221; James said. &#8220;Because it discredits the 60-plus games that guys had fighting for that position.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Related <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/nba\/lebron-james-to-listen-if-nba-bars-fans-over-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">LeBron James to \u2018Listen\u2019 if NBA Bars Fans Over Coronavirus<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NBA, should it eventually resume its currently suspended regular season, shouldn&#8217;t jump straight to the playoffs, according to LeBron James. &#8220;It discredits the 60-plus games&#8221; already played in the battle for postseason seeding, says James. As the coronavirus global pandemic continues to wreck havoc, LeBron added that he&#8217;d be disappointed if players had to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":564563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,62493],"tags":[63054,397,13004,149,62523],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-564518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","category-newswire","tag-coronavirus","tag-fans","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-mantle"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564518"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564569,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564518\/revisions\/564569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564518"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=564518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}