Austin Reaves drops truth bomb on why LeBron refuses to play 1-on-1 basketball

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James’ teammate — Austin Reaves — alleges that the 39-year-old does not participate in one-on-one games because he doesn’t consider it to be “real basketball.”

“Nah — he don’t play one-on-one,” Reaves said when asked if he’s played James in a one-on-one. “He said one-on-one’s not real basketball, which I kind of agree with.”

Basketball is a team game after all, and James likely understands that fact as well as anyone who has ever played the sport.

James can score the ball with the best of them, to be clear. He has more regular-season NBA points to his name than any other player in the history of the league.

However, it takes a great team to win a title, and while James has four titles to his name, he couldn’t have won them on his own.

Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were invaluable components to the first two titles that James won in his NBA career, which came in the years 2012 and 2013. The former helped take a lot of pressure off James from a scoring standpoint, and the latter consistently gobbled up rebounds for the Heat while stretching the floor.

Additionally, when James won his third NBA title in 2016, he had one of the best offensive players that the game has ever seen on his team in Kyrie Irving. Irving averaged 27.1 points on 46.8 percent shooting from the field, 40.5 percent from 3-point range and 93.9 percent from the charity stripe against the Golden State Warriors in that year’s championship series.

The 39-year-old then captured his fourth title a few years later in 2020, and there’s a legitimate argument that he wasn’t even the best player on his team during the Lakers’ championship run.

During the 2020 NBA Playoffs, star big man Anthony Davis led the Lakers in points (27.7) and blocks (1.4) per game.

If Reaves can build upon what was a successful third season in the pros in the 2024-25 season, that would ostensibly aid James in the pursuit of his fifth title. He averaged a career-high 15.9 points along with 4.3 rebounds and 5.5 assists per contest in 82 games played (57 starts) during the 2023-24 regular season.