LeBron James returns from suspension, says blow to Isaiah Stewart ‘definitely accidental’ and 1-game ban unwarranted

INDIANAPOLIS — LeBron James was napping in the city that never sleeps on Monday when the NBA announced that the Los Angeles Lakers star would be suspended for the first time in his 19-year career and have to miss Tuesday’s game against the New York Knicks.

“Rob [Pelinka] called me. I missed his call,” James told ESPN of the Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager dialing in the bad news. “As soon as when I checked my phone and it was a missed call, I was like, ‘I know I’m suspended.’

“I mean, it’s some bulls—. But whatever.”

James more than made up for missed time in Wednesday’s 124-116 overtime win against the Indiana Pacers in his first game back since sitting out the Knicks game for striking Detroit Pistons big man Isaiah Stewart in the face, drawing blood.

James scored a season-high 39 points, including eight of L.A.’s 12 points in the extra session, to help the Lakers erase a 12-point second-half deficit and finish their five-game road trip with a record of 2-3.

While James gave the Indiana crowd a show — even mimicking Sam Cassell’s nether region dance after nailing a 3 late in regulation, and then breaking out an old celebration from his Miami Heat days, “The Silencer,” after knocking down another deep triple in OT — it was a decidedly off-Broadway performance.

He still longed for the opportunity he missed at Madison Square Garden, a chance that comes around just once a season now that he plays in the Western Conference.

“I was devastated,” James told ESPN. “It’s my favorite place in the world to play so I was looking forward to it. But it is what it is.”

Even though the nationally televised Lakers-Knicks game featuring James — still perhaps the most prominent face in the game at age 36 — followed the Pistons game on the schedule, there was no chicanery by the league office to put a thumb on the scale to keep him in. No personal appeal between James and NBA commissioner Adam Silver. No delayed investigation that wouldn’t…