Tonight was supposed to mean something more.
We’re talking the Los Angeles Lakers vs the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center. Stephen Curry and LeBron James, the two most important players in the last two decades of NBA basketball, sharing the same floor one more time. Except they won’t tonight, folks. Steph Curry is out tonight on the front side of a back-to-back, and just like that, the basketball gods closed the window on the one matchup that still moves the needle for casual fans and die-hards alike.
Zero Steph vs. LeBron games this season!
Look at what we missed. During their long rivalry they’ve traded highlights and crazy box scores. Per Basketball Reference, in the regular season head-to-head data LeBron is averaging 30.2 points on 20.9 field goal attempts across 27 games. Steph is answering with 24.9 points and 6.5 assists across those same 27 matchups. That’s two legends still going to work every single time they see each other. And this season, we didn’t get one chapter of it.
The playoff numbers are even more absurd. LeBron at 31.3 points, 10.9 rebounds, 8.5 assists per game across 28 playoff matchups between these two. Steph at 25.6 points and 6.5 assists. Four championships worth of pressure, four Finals between these franchises, and a Western Conference playoff battle too boot.
That history is the whole reason tonight stings.
The Warriors are sitting 10th in the West at 37-42, trying to survie their way into the Play-In. The Lakers are 4th at 50-29. But strip away the standings and what you really had scheduled for tonight was probably one of the last (if not the last) meetings between these two legends who carried the torch for their sport. LeBron is 41 and Steph turned 38 in March. The runway on seeing these two go head-to-head with genuine stakes attached is not getting longer.
And the Warriors lost to the Lakers twice already this season, 105-99 in February and 129-101 in late February. Golden State took the first meeting back in October, 119-109, with Jimmy Butler dropping 31. That was the game where the season felt full of possibility before the injuries started stacking up like unpaid bills.
Now Steph is managing his workload on a back-to-back and we’re all sitting here doing the math on what’s left of this era.
The answer is not much. And tonight just reminded us how fast it’s actually going.