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Lakers’ LeBron James earns All-NBA third-team honors

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While the Lakers underachieved this season, LeBron James pushed the limits of what a 37-year-old can do in the NBA.

The league named James a third-team All-NBA forward on Tuesday evening, the 18th all-league honor of James’ 19-year career. James spent much of the season neck-and-neck with Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo for the NBA scoring title, eventually falling short but finishing with a 30.3 ppg mark – his highest since 2006.

James bested his own mark for most All-NBA career selections. He’s now been a third-team honoree twice, his other third-team nod coming in 2019. James received 54 third-team votes, 35-second-team votes and two first-team votes from a panel of NBA observers. He was the second-leading vote-getter on the third team to Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns.

As a team, the Lakers finished out of the postseason with a 33-49 record. James’ biggest shortcoming was availability: He played just 56 games while struggling with various injuries. After the season was over in April, he lamented failing to translate a season of All-NBA-caliber play into more wins.

“Winning is everything to me,” he said. “And the fact that I was playing the way that I was playing and it wasn’t resulting in wins, it just wasn’t enough. So the frustration level was definitely at a high at times cause you’re just trying to figure out how I can be better, how the team can be better.”

Still, James put up unprecedented production for a player his age. No one has ever averaged more points in his age-37 season, and had James played two more games, he might have been able to challenge Embiid for his second career scoring title.

Along the way, James made history, too: He became the first 37-year-old to have multiple 50-point games in the same season (he notched both within the same week in March). He also passed Karl Malone to become the league’s second-leading regular-season scorer, now needing just 1,325 points to pass one of the NBA’s great examples of longevity, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (James has already passed him in combined regular-season and playoff points).

James still made an impact as a distributor (6.2 apg) and rebounder (8.2 rpg) for the Lakers, often playing more frontcourt roles for the undersized roster. But he made his biggest mark as a screen-and-roll threat in small-ball units or launching 3-pointers at a career-high rate (2.9 3pg, 35.9% shooting).

After the season, General Manager Rob Pelinka acknowledged that the team had squandered a season of James’ continuing prime.

“LeBron James is a player that’s on the Mt. Rushmore of basketball and every season of his 19 so far has to be looked at as a precious commodity,” he said in April. “And we need to do all we can to be caretakers of his legacy and to try to build the best team we can around him.”

Milwaukee forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, fellow two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic (Denver), Dallas’ Luka Doncic, Phoenix’s Devin Booker and Boston’s Jayson Tatum were voted to the first team, the first time in 67 years all five players were 27 or younger.

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Philadelphia center Joel Embiid, the NBA’s leading scorer and runner-up to Jokic for MVP, led the second team. He was joined by Memphis point guard Ja Morant, winner of the Most Improved Player award, Brooklyn forward Kevin Durant, Golden State guard Steph Curry and Chicago forward DeMar DeRozan.

Phoenix point guard Chris Paul, Atlanta guard Trae Young and Toronto forward Pascal Siakam joined James and Towns on the third team.

On Tuesday night like many Americans, James was less concerned with his All-NBA honor than the mass shooting in a Texas school that killed at least 21 people (18 children). James did not acknowledge his selection on social media but tweeted several times about his reaction to the incident. The 37-year-old has been outspoken against gun violence for the last decade.

Tweeted James on Tuesday: “There simply has to be change! HAS TO BE!! … Praying to the heavens above to all with kids these days in schools.”

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