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Rookie Bennedict Mathurin said LeBron “is going to have to show me he’s better than me.” Then he out-played him.
LeBron James is conservatively a top-three NBA player of all-time. Bennedict Mathurin is a rookie guard whose biggest accomplishment in basketball is being named a Second-Team All-American when he was in college at Arizona. There should be no particular interest in a matchup between the living legend and the No. 6 overall pick in the 2022 draft, but an offseason comment by Mathurin created quite a bit of it when the Indiana Pacers traveled to take on the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night.
In a Washington Post story in June ahead of the draft, Mathurin essentially called out James when trying to speak to his own confidence entering the league. “A lot of people say he’s great. I want to see how great he is. I don’t think anybody is better than me. He’s going to have to show me he’s better than me,” Mathurin said of James.
On Tuesday, Mathurin’s Pacers faced James’ Lakers for the first time. The Lakers were supposed to be a team that could contend deep in the playoffs this year, while Indiana was expected to be among the league’s worst teams. Instead, the Pacers would have home court advantage if the NBA Playoffs started today. The Lakers would end the year as one of the league’s worst teams and have to give their pick to the New Orleans Pelicans as part of the Anthony Davis trade.
The Pacers beat the Lakers, 116-115, a thrilling game that saw Indiana erase a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter. The Pacers’ comeback was capped by a game-winning buzzer-beater from Indiana’s other rookie, Andrew Nembhard, in one of the most exciting final sequences you will see all season.
Meanwhile, Mathurin showed out against James, too. The rookie finished with 23 points and eight rebounds, as LeBron finished with 21 points and seven rebounds.
Talking trash to LeBron is usually a fool’s errand, but Mathurin actually backed it up. Best of all, his Pacers got the win.
Watch full highlights of Mathurin’s game here:
Mathurin has been phenomenal as a rookie so far. He’s averaging 19.1 points per game on 41.7 percent shooting from three-point range. There have been a lot of impressive rookies so far, but the Rookie of the Year race will likely come down to Mathurin vs. No. 1 overall pick Paolo Banchero.
Some people scoffed at Mathurin’s confidence when he called out LeBron ahead of the draft, but he’s clearly backed it up so far. The Pacers have an awesome young backcourt to build around with Mathurin and Tyrese Haliburton. In the brand new and obviously very serious LeBron vs. Mathurin rivalry, round one goes to the rookie.
