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LeBron James had his second best scoring night during the regular season in his career. His 57 points, on a career-high 23 made field goals out of 34 attempts, was second best only to his 61 points on March 3, 2014 as a part of the Miami Heat. 57 points is also tied for the most by a players in Cleveland history with Kyrie Irving. James scored in a variety of ways: layups, dunks, post-ups, fade aways. You name it and he did it. Here is what players on both sides of the aisle had to say.
John Wall
"I think early on we gave him too many easy baskets. He was getting and-ones and layups and dunks in transition. A type of player like that sees the ball going in the basket and I think I did the best I could to try and contest on every shot and he made some tough shots over me and that’s why he’s the player that he is."
Bradley Beal
“It was one of those days for him. He was aggressive from the jump. We threw a bunch of looks at him, but we have to do a better job of trying to take it out of his hands – we probably could have doubled him way earlier in the game and try and force other guys to make plays. We competed and that’s one thing that we can say that we competed. He made a lot of tough shots. Those guys were making shots that we were living with. We have to adjust better on the fly, too.”
Markieff Morris
“That is all you can do. There are not many times guys are going to make every single shot like he made tonight. He is a good player man, that is what happens.”
On whether he will give the Wizards a better shot on guarding LeBron when he is back to 100 percent: “Hell yeah!”
Kelly Oubre Jr.
“Whenever you’re hitting tough, turnaround in your face fadeaways from off your left and your right shoulder, it’s your night. I didn’t even know that he was trying to break a record until Jodie [Meeks] told me something at halftime. He definitely got that. He was just on a different level tonight.”
Scott Brooks
"We obviously witnessed one of the best players to ever play the game. He still has it, if you guys didn't know that. We knew that. Going into the game, very rarely you see a guy hit like 10 straight heat-check shots. It seems like every shot he was contested, and a lot of them were mid-range. I think out of 34 shots he had four threes. We tried everything. We tried everything. You got to pat him on the behind. Great game, amazing player. You got to move on to the next game."
On guarding LeBron James: “Mike [Scott] wasn't in the game. Could've went with Otto [Porter] but we knew we were going to double team so we wanted to make sure, maybe double team some of his base line post ups. We wanted to come up with the bigger guy of the small line-up we had out there. Tonight, nothing that we did, and we did a lot of things, was going to work. The guy was on fire. That's what happens certain nights with great players.”
LeBron James
What it requires mentally to be able to score 57 points on a high field-goal percentage:
“You just don't get bored of the process. Work on my game every day. The shots that I was taking. Pretty much all of them I work on. Even the one legged fadeaway three near the baseline, I work on that too and I barely missed that. So me being efficient is something that I have always kind of worked on."
How the Wizards defended him tonight:
"They played me a lot of one-on-one in the low post and I’ve been working quite a bit on that. My turnarounds, my fadeaways, and my footwork, and things of that nature. I was able to get to it and once I fade-away I don't see he defender as much so I just focus on the target."
His feeling shooting the ball tonight:
“Every shot that I took I felt like it was going in, even when they were highly contested. I just had my eyes on the target. Just trying to stay disciplined, and as I've grown as a basketball player, I try to stay disciplined with my shot and disciplined with my balance. And every shot that I take felt like it was going in.”
Dwayne Wade
On LeBron James’ Performance:
“When he plays like that. I mean, every night he’s dominant, but that right there shows what everyone talks about. He’s the best player in the game – he’s the best player in the world. When he’s in that kind of rhythm, that kind of mindset, no one on the court can stop him. He knew how important this game was for us, after losing four in a row. He put us on his back and everyone chipped in.”
On whether he saw anything from LeBron he never has before:
“I’ve seen it all. All the shots he’s worked on, he was hitting them tonight. A lot of it is him getting back into better shape because he missed training camp. Now he can get down there and bang and bang and do all the things he was doing tonight. He had unguardable shots. It was great defense, better offense.”
Kevin Love
“He gave them a little bit of everything, inside and out. His post-game was really there. He took his time, showed his patience. With both hands, he got to the free throw and it was really in the fourth quarter where he inserted his dominance and took over the game.”
Ty Lue
“It came to the end of the third quarter and he came to the bench and [I] said do you [James] need a quick one and he [James] said no. We knew he was feeling good. He carried us, but you got to continue to keep running through the game. We got up 15, 16, we got stops, we walked the ball up the court and kind of got stagnant. When we get stops, we got to continue to run through the game for 48 minutes.”