INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — LeBron James just put his head down and repeatedly drove to the basket Thursday night.
It was his vintage move.
The same late-game philosophy that led to four NBA championships and has him on the precipice of becoming the NBA’s new career scoring champ worked perfectly again at Indiana. James finished with 26 points, seven rebounds and seven assists and fueled another frantic fourth-quarter rally, helping erase a 14-point deficit to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to a 112-111 victory over the Pacers.
He’s now 63 points away from breaking Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s career record, 38,387 points.
“I just understood my game was needed more on the interior tonight,” James said. “Needed to get some rebounds, need to get some baskets in there and and I felt like we were attacking, especially in the fourth quarter.”
James looked content doing the dirty work even though the Lakers trailed the entire first three quarters, usually by double digits.
But with a friendly road crowd imploring James to lead the Lakers back, his 3-pointer with 2:35 left in the game gave Los Angeles its first lead of the game. Anthony Davis’ short jumper with 35.1 seconds left and subsequent block proved to be the decisive plays on a night he had 31 points and 14 rebounds, but was left out of the All-Star Game.
For the third time in 21 months, Indiana found itself at the forefront of a league-changing pursuit. It was here in May 2021 that Russell Westbrook recorded his 181st career triple-double to tie Oscar Robertson’s career mark. And it was here in December 2021 that Stephen Curry made five 3-pointers to pull within one of matching Ray Allen’s career mark of 2,973.
James is now at 38,325 and this one clearly means something special to him.
“I think it’s one of the greatest records in…