LeBron James has been in plenty of playoff holes over the course of his 20-plus year NBA career. He hasn't always been able to pull himself out of them, but the fact that he actually has shows nothing is ever off the table. In his current series, he has the opportunity to do something he hasn't done since his last playoff series vs. the Boston Celtics: come back from 2-0.
After the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder - a loss the Lakers evidently did not take lying down - he is now down 2-0 going back to LA. The odds of the Lakers coming back are so laughable that merely mentioning such a possibility would make any non-Lakers fan laugh. However, LeBron has done that before, and the last time was against the Celtics.
In 2018, Boston was up on Cleveland 2-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, but LeBron cooked up a miracle to take four of the five remaining games. Sorry to conjure up bad memories for Celtics Nation, but to be fair, it was miracle in and of itself that Boston was there after all the firepower they lost before the postseason even started.
Whether what's about to be said next may be painful for fans to hear. Even with all they lost, that Celtics team should have beaten that Cavaliers squad that went straight to the lottery once LeBron skipped town. The fact that Cleveland won in the end (and just barely, mind you) speaks to the power LeBron possessed at his peak.
LeBron James is down 2-0 in a best-of-7 series for just the 11th time in his NBA playoff career.
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) May 8, 2026
The last time his team overcame a 2-0 series deficit was the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals (Cavs vs. Celtics). pic.twitter.com/2SbmZrtcTi
It also spoke to just how good Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were going to be together in no time, but LeBron carrying a lottery-bound squad to the NBA Finals remains one of his most notable non-championship accomplishments ever.
He's done it three times in fact
James has come back down 2-0 to win a series three times, with his last one being against the Celtics. The other two times came against the Golden State Warriors when the Cavaliers came back to beat them to win the 2016 NBA Championship.
The first time came all the way back in 2007, when he and the Cavaliers came back to beat the Detroit Pistons in the 2007 NBA Finals, showing how far back James' brilliance goes. Fun fact: only 34 teams in NBA history have come back from being 2-0, and LeBron played for three of them.
Will history repeat itself against Oklahoma City? In any other circumstance, it's a hard no, but because LeBron James has always defied the odds, it's "Well, likely no, but it's LeBron, so you never know."
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