LOS ANGELES — With seemingly the entire city of Portland hanging off of him — grabbing, pulling, hacking — a relentless LeBron James willed his way to the basket on Wednesday night only to be relentlessly battered by the Trail Blazers defense for his efforts.
He leaned for a long time against the stanchion after taking a forearm to the face and executed a barrel roll after C.J. McCollum clung to his arm in an attempt to slow the inevitable.
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After drawing one third quarter foul, James turned to the crowd and pounded his chest three times.
Here I am, he seemed to be saying. You can’t stop me.
On a night he passed Wilt Chamberlain for fifth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, James strode to the line and made those two free throws in the second half of an overpowering performance. He survived a stunningly physical assault from the Trail Blazers to tally 44 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists.
The Lakers won their fourth straight game, 126-117, and handed the Trail Blazers just their fourth loss of the season.
“My Little League coaches always told me stop crying or complaining about a foul, just play through it,” James said. “Try to make the bucket and control what you can control. I get fouled a lot. Sometimes it’s called, sometimes it’s not, but I’ve got to still maintain my focus because there’s so much more of the game to be played.”
The Blazers sent James to the foul line for a season-high 15 attempts. His only two misses came in the first half — a telling number considering he missed a pair of free throws in the final minute of a tie game against Atlanta on Sunday. The shot to his head came courtesy of Portland forward Jake Layman, and McCollum was levied a flagrant for pulling on James’ arm in the fourth quarter.
“I know how to be able to fight off defenders with a lot of contact and either if it’s a foul or it’s not a foul,” James said. “I’m not one to play for a foul, I play to try to get a bucket or try to get my guys a look and if the foul happens it happens. So be it.”
On the court, James seemed to gain strength with each foul. But when he checked out at the end of the third quarter, with the Lakers up 97-89, James needed the rest. For most of the season the four-time MVP has sat on an elevated seat when not in the game. On Wednesday, he lay down on the baseline. He remained in that position through two timeouts before checking back into the game with seven minutes left.
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Asked how the physicality of the game affected him, James said, “I don’t know. See how I feel in the morning.”
It’s worth monitoring. James will soon be 34, and the thatches of white that populate his robust beard have grown thicker. On Wednesday, however, he was near impossible to stop.
Behind James the Lakers improved to 8-6 and have won four games in a row, but they will need him to provide even more going forward after Rajon Rondo suffered a fractured bone in his right hand.
Coach Luke Walton said Rondo injured the hand, technically the third metacarpal, while chasing down Jusuf Nurkic for a steal in the fourth quarter. With Rondo potentially sidelined for up to a month, James will likely need to shoulder even more of the playmaking load than he already has.
That wasn’t a problem on Wednesday. With Chamberlain’s 31,419 career points in his sights, James set to carving up the Blazers — a task that gained momentum in the final minute when James buried two pull-up 3-pointers, including one from 28 feet, to give L.A. a 59-55 lead going into the break.
“I felt my jumper was feeling very comfortable and my three ball was feeling good,” James said. “But we just wanted to try to get back into the game and close the quarter the right way and we did that at the end of the second.”
It was James first history-making performance in Lakers uniform, but more almost certainly await. After Wednesday he is just 868 points away from Michael Jordan’s career mark of 32,292 points, with Kobe Bryant roughly 1,300 more points beyond him.
At his current pace of 27.6 points per game, James will pass Jordan sometime in mid-January.
“To do what he did and get on that top five of that list and play basketball the way he plays basketball,” Walton said, “with how unselfish he is and how great he is with getting teammates involved, is something that should be praised and talked about.”
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There was symmetry in James passing Chamberlain in a Lakers uniform. Chamberlain, like James, was a Hall of Famer who chiseled his legacy elsewhere before finding himself in Los Angeles nearer the end than to the beginning.
“One of the most dominant forces we ever had in our game along with Shaq,” James said of Chamberlain. “One of the greatest Lakers ever to play the game.”
(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)