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Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has been known to terrorize an NBA franchise or two in his day. While he hasn't been quite as dominant over the NBA landscape since joining the Lakers in the summer of 2018, there was a time when virtually every single Eastern Conference team found themselves victimized by James' greatness during the 2000s and 2010s.
One player who matched up with James frequently in the postseason throughout his career was former NBA point guard Jeff Teague, who won a championship with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021 and has since retired.
Recently, Teague took to his own Club 520 podcast to discuss his envy of James' greatness, including a time when he thought he was going to beat the king in a playoff setting for the first time ever and ended up losing.
“I’ve never won a playoff game against him… One time we was up 30. I swear to God… I’m like, I finally beat this dude. He walking at halftime said, ‘We good, we good, everybody, keep their head up’… I said it’s over,” said Teague, via ClutchPoints on X, formerly Twitter.
The game in question was Game 3 of the 2017 Eastern Conference semifinals, when Teague was a member of the Indiana Pacers, who led James' Cleveland Cavaliers by 27 points before relinquishing that lead and losing. They would go on to lose the series in a 4-0 sweep.
Prior to that, Teague had also been swept by James as a member of the Atlanta Hawks in both the 2015 and 2016 postseasons.
Can the Lakers salvage LeBron James' final years?
As previously mentioned, the historic dominance that James once displayed over the Eastern Conference hasn't quite translated in full form to the Lakers in recent seasons. While Los Angeles did win a championship in the 2020 Bubble, the team has won just two playoff series in the four years since, both of which occurred during the 2023 postseason.
At the current juncture, the Lakers' lack of cap space and young talent make it so that they don't have many clear paths forward into contention in a Western Conference that is growing more and more competitive seemingly by the day.
James recently proved at the Olympics that he is still one of the game's best players, as is co-star Anthony Davis, who also won gold with Team USA in Paris. However, as currently constructed, the Lakers don't have enough defense or perimeter shooting to truly stay competitive with the way the game is changing.
