NBA: 8 players who will breakout during the post-All-Star playoff push

LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers

Pre all-star numbers: 26.8 ppg, 8.6 rpg, 7.6 apg, 1.3 spg, 0.6 bpg, .513/.355/.679

This has proven to be one of the most challenging regular seasons of LeBron’s storied NBA career and he now faces his toughest – non-playoff – challenge; to get the sub .500 Lakers into the playoffs.

Now, if James had not gotten injured against the Warriors on Christmas Day and missed 18 games then we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But now, in order for the Lakers to make it into the postseason, LeBron is going to have to go into playoff mode sooner rather than later.

We are going to need to see peak LeBron if we want to watch the Lakers past April and if anyone was ever up to this task, it would be number 23.

Post all-star numbers (prediction): 29-30 ppg, 8-9 rpg, 8-9 apg, 55% fg, 37% 3 pt, 75% ft