When I saw he had 20 in the first i thought he was going for Kobe's 61 point MSG scoring record set a couple of days ago. Looks like he wont get that now but should rack up a pretty tidy triple double.

Lebron has 40-8-10 heading into the 4th...

Come on Quagmire, where are you now about the Knicks 'fantastic' defence??? Destroyed by Kobe and now LBJ!
They are terrible!!!

52-10-11 - triple double for Lebron in win.

After todays performance by Lebron which statistically was amazing, I have to say the show boating was a joke.

Particularly the numerous times he held the ball so long doing that stupid studder step contributing to his team exceeding the shot clock on more than one occassion.... and the way he chased that last rebound through the pack putting himself at risk with half a second left in the game just to record a triple double was laughable.

If this guy ever wants to be mentioned in the same conversation with the greats, he is going to need to clean up his act.... right now he is a joke.

So LBJoke,

He has just scored 52 in a narrow away win for his team and all you want to do is criticise the guy!

What more is a 24 year old who is almost single-handedly leading his team to the equal 2nd best record in the NBA, with an un-defeated home record of 23/0, expected to do. (They really aren't that good you know!). The coaches did not select any of his team-mates to the All-Star Game.

For instance today Lebron shot 17/33 (51%), the rest of the team was 20/47 (42%), he was 16/19 from the line (84%), rest of the team 7/11 (63%). So if he doesn't hold on to the ball as much as he did, Cavs probably don't win today.

Also don't think there is anything wrong in going all out for the final rebound either, why not get a triple double when you are that close. It's not like he pulled a Ricky Davis and shot at the other teams basket to get himself the rebound!

And he was near enough to the rebound anyway.

Thought Wally's comment was funny:

James added 11 assists and 10 rebounds, becoming the first player since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975 to have a triple-double in a 50-point game. James grabbed his final rebound with under 2 seconds left, then tumbled out of bounds as time expired.

"A pretty impressive triple-double," Cleveland's Wally Szczerbiak said. "I bet his fantasy owners are pretty happy."

He has been playing with much more of a team focus this year, which I admire but he clearly let Kobe's 61 at MSG influence him out of that mind set today.

They trounced NY by an average of 27 in their last 2 meetings with LBJ scoring just 21 and 26..... but he puts on this show boating crap and they nearly lose.

IMO... He doesn't go about his business like a true champion with professionalism and modesty ala... MJ, Kareem, Bird etc.

Kobe worked it out in the last couple of years, how long will it take Lebron to? will he ever?

Here is the details of the Mo trade: -

"In a three-team trade, Cleveland acquires Mo Williams from Milwaukee for Damon Jones and Joe Smith, and Milwaukee acquires Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin from Oklahoma City for Smith and Desmond Mason"

I have read that the Bucks thought this was 'addition' by 'subtraction', basically that the back court of Mo and Redd were going to tie up a lot of cash over the next few years and probably weren't a good fit for each other and no deals were available for Redd.

A Scoring PG is probably exactly what LeBron needs next to him, so Mo could be a very important piece of the puzzle come play-off time (although he himself has only ever played in one 5 game play-off series)

Thanks. Looks like a great trade for the Cavs, right?

I don't see a lot of NBA, so tend to go by stats. Still watching through that Cavs-Pistons game from Monday morning (10 minutes at a time over breakfast as mentioned the other day) and don't mind Williams at all. Assumed he was a bit of a cocky hothead from his Bucks days, but he seems pretty task-oriented with Cleveland. 17 PPG alongside LeBron isn't too bad.

Also have more of an appreciation for Ben Wallace after only being able to go on his stats this season. And never knew Ilgauskas had range on his shot.

LBJoke - I know where you're coming from. He could definitely pull it back a bit. When he's smiling and joking around on the sidelines, it's hard to tell if it's arrogance ("I can crap all over you and still have time to muck around.") or he's just running around and enjoying himself out there.

Mike D'Antoni disgraced yet again. How long until Knicks fans start chanting for Isiah's return?

Disgraced? They lost to the top team of each conference by under 10 points

I must admitt I was quite surprised to see LBJ singing and doing air guitar in the time out not even paying attention to the coach when there was about 8 seconds to play and only 5 in it. But he then continued to do it seemingly shot boating to the crowd right up to the point where the Knicks passed the ball in.
Extremely impressive player but is out there for the money and is treating it very much like a business. He is looking at becoming a free agent next in 2010 and all the talk is that he will go to NY, are you really surprised he had such a dominant game there today??? He just added another $20 million to his contract!!! And with Jay Z there i'm sure there will be a bidding war between NY and NJ.

ELG,

That's the first time an NBA team has had back-to-back 50 point games scored on them in nearly half a century!

so what. Maybe that was the team plan, it nearly worked. Last time Bron got 25, or whatever, they got blown out.

ELG - The Cavs wiped the Knicks by 36 and 18 in their last 2 match ups with LBJ only scoring 26 & 21.... team plan..... pfft.

The jury is out on whether he his ninth board was the result of some generous stat keeping anyway.

Have a look at this:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Video-Slap-an-asterisk-on-LeBron-s-MSG-triple-d;_ylt=ApZXVcwpyhqMQc7OJ8.FTrK8vLYF?urn=nba,139191

Agree with Panther's comments..... I don't understand why he does it though, I am sure D-Wade and Kobe get more respect for the way they conduct themselves.

The age of respect for the game and your opponent to a certain extent has been destroyed by commercialism in Basketball.... I wish FOX would air the ESPN Classics channel in Australia, so we could watch Bird, Magic and MJ games with out all this show boating crap.

How do you know it wasn't a team plan? you just reinforced my statement, that when Lebron scores mid 20's, they blow NY out, when he gets 50, they lose by 6, or whatever it was.

And i think lebron is allowed to showboat, he is the best player in the world.

Last word..... NBA have stripped LBJ of his triple double....... Lol....... incorrectly credited him with Ben Wallaces rebound!

Beat me to it LBJoke.

Just read it on ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3889674

(Linky was not working)

I wonder how seriously the NBA takes statistics. They will take away a rebound (which was clearly Wallace's) but they let an assist stand when someone receives the ball at the top of the key, take two dribbles and lays it up.

D'Antoni and his Knicks gave up 144 points today against the rubbish Warriors!