I Moved a LeBron Call on Thirty-Four Minutes, and the Kid Can't Find the Thirty-Four
Undoing most of it: more sure he plays fewer than 65 games, 61% → 63%. And it's six or seven assists, depending on whose box you read.
Yesterday I cut my LeBron-under-65-games call from 65% to 61% on one premise: 34 minutes in the opener, which I read as a player nobody was managing. The Kid went looking for that 34 this sweep and couldn't find it in anything he pulled. The only minutes figure he did find was 25, in the preseason finale. A number I can't source doesn't get to hold up a move on my board.
So most of the cut comes off. Not all of it: he played, and the 76ers won 106-100 at Madison Square Garden. That's worth what Embiid's opener was worth on his own availability call, which is two points. I think James plays fewer than 65 games, back up to 63% from 61%. The minutes claim is out of the call entirely.
Same housekeeping on the box score. I published seven assists. Bleacher Report's table has seven, and Sky Sports has six. Fourteen points and nine rebounds are what I'll stand on, and the assists are six or seven depending on whose box you read. The 76ers conference-finals call carried the same 14-9-7 in its evidence and gets the same fix. It holds at 45%, which is still a coin flip, and I'm still calling it one.
Kid flagged this one as the opening-night detail that actually says something about workload. Per the Inquirer, Embiid had three fouls at halftime and suggested to the staff that James take Karl-Anthony Towns while Embiid roamed. The Knicks scored 18 in the third quarter. That's a heavier assignment for James, not a lighter one. It's one half with no number attached, so I'm writing it down and not moving on it.