{"id":4602,"date":"2024-08-12T22:30:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T22:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=4602"},"modified":"2024-08-12T22:31:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T22:31:56","slug":"lebron-made-a-lasting-impression-in-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=4602","title":{"rendered":"LeBron made a lasting impression in the Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>TOP OF THE TOWN\u2011 <\/strong>You know, during LeBron James\u2019 rise to NBA stardom I noticed he would often be lazy on defense. Sure, he made stunning defensive plays. He\u2019s good enough to do that. More often, though, he just floated around seemingly unconcerned about defense. But I have to give the 39-year-old James credit. He was interested in the Olympic Games, fully engaged on both ends of the court. I\u2019m sure he realized at his age these Olympics would be his last and he wanted to leave a lasting impression. He was great, making passes that only he can make, playing defense like they were his last games, and they were. He led the Americans, and his teammates knew it. There were times when he went full court on the dribble and drove right through defenses to score on unbelievable plays. As I watched him do this, I didn\u2019t blame defenses for shying away from him. He\u2019s six-foot-9 and has a listed weight of 250, although I\u2019m guessing it might be closer to 280 pounds. LeBron was great and the reason the Americans hung on in close games with Serbia and France to secure it\u2019s fifth straight gold medal in basketball. Sure enough, LeBron was named the MVP of the Olympics, and not Steph Curry who was unbelievable in his own right in key games, including against the French when he nailed four straight threes in the last 2 minutes and 11 seconds to pull the Americans away from a three-point lead to 11-point victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TOP OF THE TOWN\u2011 You know, during LeBron James\u2019 rise to NBA stardom I noticed he would often be lazy&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4604,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4602\/revisions\/4604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}