The Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James led his team to a play-in game win over the Golden State Warriors. The four-time NBA champion finished the game with a triple-double of 22 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists.
By winning this game, the Lakers qualified for the playoffs as the seventh seed in the Western Conference. They will face the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs. The series begins this coming Sunday.
After the game, James posted on Instagram a picture of himself at Staples Center standing in the middle of the court on the Lakers logo. Next to the picture he posted a passage referred to as “The Man in the Arena” from a speech titled “Citizenship in a Republic” given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” “THE MAN IN THE ARENA,”
