© Provided by For The WinThat being said, LeBron did appear to provide Michael Jordan fans with some extra material on Sunday night.
After their first meeting nearly ended in a brawl, the Lakers and Pistons were in Los Angeles and hoping to avoid lingering drama from the LeBron-Isaiah Stewart altercation. And aside from the Lakers crowd booing Stewart at the line, it would have been easy to forget that near-fight even happened.
But with the Lakers up by five and 7.9 seconds remaining in the game, LeBron seemingly tried to troll the Pistons and put the game away with an eyes-closed free throw. Uh, about that …
LeBron appeared to look over to Cade Cunningham and say he was going to shoot the free throw with his eyes closed. The shot that followed narrowly avoided being an airball, grazing the rim as the Pistons all shouted, “SHORT!”
Again, not to bring up the tired MJ-LeBron comparisons, but Jordan’s eyes-closed free throw went viral on Twitter last week. Jordan made his no-look attempt in 1991. So, it was pretty fresh on the collective conscious of NBA Twitter.
I could only imagine the reaction had LeBron air-balled his attempt — something he’s done with his eyes open!
Still, the game was essentially out of hand there (though Detroit did have a timeout left), so why not? The Lakers won, 110-106. LeBron finished with 33 points.