JaVale McGee looks poised to have the best season of his career playing alongside LeBron James with the Los Angeles Lakers, and he thinks that has a lot to do with a coach finally realizing his asthma condition is not prohibitive.
McGee had 20 points, six rebounds and four blocked shots in 25 minutes in Wednesday’s win over the Phoenix Suns. He’s now averaging 16.2 points in 23.8 minutes per game, which is significantly more than the 9.5 minutes per game he played with the Golden State Warriors over the past two seasons.
After Wednesday’s win, McGee said he is sick of being asked about his asthma.
“This is what I want to say about the asthma,” he said, via Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com. “Stop bringing that up like I’m out here wheezing and having asthma attacks. I’ve never had an asthma attack in my life. I feel like that’s definitely lowered my value as a basketball player.”
McGee then implied that he feels teams he has played for in the past have used his asthma as a reason to not put him on the floor.
“People say, ‘Oh he only can play 20 minutes because he has asthma.’ No. there’s a lot of people with asthma in the league,” he said. “I feel like somebody stamped that excuse on me like, ‘Cool, we can play him low minutes because he has asthma.'”
McGee opened up about his asthma issues several years ago, and he appeared to turn a corner after being put on new medicine. The main reason he probably hasn’t played as much is that he has a tendency to make boneheaded decisions, but he clearly does not feel the asthma is an issue any longer.
