During Monday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers, LeBron James, the LA Lakers’ superstar, played for 30 minutes but failed to snatch even a single rebound in their 44-point loss. Despite this, James achieved an impressive feat as he became the player with the most minutes played in NBA history, including the playoffs. With 66,320 minutes under his belt, he surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s previous record of 66,297 minutes. Although he struggled during the game, scoring only 18 points and making five assists, James managed to steal the ball once and block another attempt.
James’ performance against the Sixers was notably lacking in rebounds. Despite averaging 8.0 rebounds leading up to the game, he failed to grab a single one that night. This was a significant departure from his usual stats, as he has maintained an average of 7.5 rebounds across 1,438 games. In fact, it marked only the fourth time in his career that he finished with zero rebounds. Tim Reynolds reported that James’ streak of at least one rebound per game had come to an end after 1,097 consecutive games, including postseason play.
It’s likely that many basketball fans will do a double-take when they see the box score from the Lakers-76ers game. In a rare occurrence, LeBron James didn’t grab a single rebound in the 30 minutes he played. Meanwhile, Lakers rookie Maxwell Lewis managed to grab one rebound in his eight minutes on the court, but it wasn’t enough to prevent LA from losing. This isn’t the first time James has gone without grabbing a rebound, but it’s been a while since it last happened – the last time was back in 2010 when he was playing for the Miami Heat. In fact, he’s only failed to grab a rebound three times throughout his long and successful career in the NBA. Two of those instances occurred during his rookie season in 2004.
