Somebody asked LeBron James if he was tired yesterday. And considering he spent the summer winning gold in smoggy Beijing and an all-star weekend in Phoenix co-hosting a blowout of a party with his pal Jay-Z - considering he has carried the Cleveland Cavaliers to championship contention - maybe it was a valid question.
But if you actually ever have the unique experience of standing next to James in a locker room, you'll know that question - "Are you tired?" - at times sounds preposterous. James likes to go shirtless when the media's prowling the change room, as if to spread the word-of-mouth legend that he is, at 6-foot-8 and 270-something pounds of bricks and blood, a freakish evolution of the species. Tired? Tired is for humans.
But James is a generous soul and he added nine assists to his 20-point and nine-rebound outing in last night's 93-76 win over the listless Raptors. And so when he was asked about the effects of that Olympic summer, he said that everybody on the U.S. Olympic team "is having a career year."
Nobody knows that to be untrue more than Toronto Raptors fans. Chris Bosh, James's teammate in Beijing, had a career November. But though his season-long numbers are about level with what he has been doing the past few seasons, his play has declined as the season has worn on.
Last night, Bosh missed his fifth straight game with a right knee injury he said on Sunday he doesn't expect to fully heal until a long off-season break. And when he was asked about the cause of his knee injury, he suggested over-use - three straight summers in which he's had at least some involvement in the U.S. Olympic program - as the key factor.
Certainly Bosh's ongoing absence was a big reason why last night's debut of the new-look roster - with Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks in town - was as anti-climactic as it possibly could have been. The Cavaliers were without regulars Ben Wallace and Delonte West. They started a shooting guard by the name of Tarence Kinsey. They even turned the ball over 20 times and made just 2-of-10 on their three-point shots. And yet they walked all over the home team.
So cue the excuses. From coach Jay Triano: "We haven't had a chance to put in our defensive concepts with two of the players that played." (And what of the other eight who contributed to allowing Cleveland to shoot 58 per cent from the field?)
From Marion: "We were discombobulated."
Marion, to be fair, actually looked decent, racking up 10 points, six rebounds and six assists in 40 minutes. And yet after the game he seemed at least a little incredulous that he'd played a team-high 40 minutes and had somehow, with Bosh out of the lineup, been the only starter not to get at least 10 shot attempts.
He got his 10 points on nine field-goal tries. And while Bryan Colangelo, the Raptors GM, had boasted that Marion is a player who "doesn't need the ball" to be effective, Marion pointed out last night that he can be "much more effective with the ball."
The Raptors would be much more effective with their starting lineup at full strength, of course. Bosh said he planned to practise today and didn't rule out playing tomorrow in New York. And Jose Calderon, even after a week's rest, still looked a step slow last night. He's nursing a hamstring injury that he acknowledges won't heal until he gets a summer-long rest and yet he continues to refuse to rule out the idea of playing for his native Spain at this summer's European championship in Poland, no matter that he tournament would require a nearly two-month commitment and end less than two weeks before training camp.
If that's his plan, if the Raptors can't talk him out of it, you wonder why don't they give him the rest he obviously needs starting now, in these futile final two months?
