{"id":46631,"date":"2025-05-21T02:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T02:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/46631\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T02:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T02:30:10","slug":"wild-lebron-james-names-the-underrated-former-mavericks-and-lakers-player-who-left-him-stunned-when-he-was-a-teenager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/46631\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wild’… LeBron James names the underrated former Mavericks and Lakers player who left him stunned when he was a teenager"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LA Lakers superstar LeBron James spelled out how the NBA has changed, in comments made on his latest podcast.<\/p>\n

During his 22 years in the NBA, LeBron James<\/a> has witnessed a change in the way the game has been played. And as he points out, the superstar did not begin watching basketball when he was drafted in 2003 either.<\/p>\n

When LeBron James returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> in 2014 after winning two titles with the Miami Heat<\/a>, he found his quest for dominance stunted by the evolution of the game, led by the Golden State Warriors\u2019 dazzling three-point shooting.<\/p>\n

Steph Curry and the Warriors changed the game to the stage where three-point shooting has become the norm, and even 7\u20334 big man Victor Wembanyama<\/a> has made it a critical part of his arsenal, scoring 142 threes this season before he was shut down midseason due to health concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"PhotoPhoto by Focus on Sport\/Getty ImagesLeBron James was stunned by Sam Perkins shooting threes<\/p>\n

LeBron James spoke to the Mind The Game podcast about his memories of watching the NBA long before he entered the league.<\/p>\n

And he casts his mind back to watching former Dallas Mavericks, LA Lakers, Seattle SuperSonics and Indiana Pacers star Sam Perkins.<\/p>\n

James admits he could not believe it when he saw a player of Sam Perkins\u2019 size shoot and score three-pointers.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cI remember watching NBA games when I was like teenager, or maybe even younger.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing Sam Perkins a shoot a three was wild. Seeing him shoot a three was like, yeah, what\u2019s happening?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is he, 6\u201911, 7 foot, shooting threes? It was like people was looking at the screen, like, \u2018Oh my God. Like, what is this?’\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation LeBron James describes is now normal for today\u2019s NBA in 2025, with the fascination with analytics and skillset focus making three-point shooters an integral part of the NBA, for players of all sizes.<\/p>\n

And now in 2025, LeBron James is one of the players today\u2019s stars of the future watch, with NBA Draft prospect Rasheer Fleming naming him as the game\u2019s Greatest of All Time<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sam Perkins had strong NBA career<\/p>\n

Sam Perkins had a strong NBA career, taken with the fourth overall pick in 1984 by the Dallas Mavericks and stayed in the league until 2001.<\/p>\n

After he left the Mavs, Perkins reached the NBA Finals three times with three different teams, the Lakers, SuperSonics and Pacers, but ended up on the losing team in each of them.<\/p>\n

These near-misses mean Perkins is an underrated player from his generation. He played 1,267 regular season games and 167 playoff games over his lengthy career, even though he never made an All-Star team.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA Lakers superstar LeBron James spelled out how the NBA has changed, in comments made on his latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,185,150,166,6,4106,2547],"class_list":{"0":"post-46631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-lebron-james","13":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","14":"tag-mavericks","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-nba-legends","17":"tag-seattle-supersonics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114543475038014405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}