The Enigma: Lebron James

I’ve been an ardent supporter of Lebron James his entire career. As he tore through his rookie season, torching defenses with flashy passes and creative drives, I marveled at the vast potential of his talent. As he led the Cavaliers to the playoffs in his third season, I smiled. He was beginning to develop into the player I thought he could be. And what was that potential? There was a potential for him to develop into the greatest of all-time, the GOAT.

As a fan, there is a certain obsession with each sport’s GOAT. There is a thrill in figuring out who that player is at an early age and watching him develop. When people started to obsess about a young Tiger Woods, we were all enthralled with the abilities of a player so young. As Peyton Manning and Tom Brady started to put up astonishing numbers at the quarterback position, battles were waged regarding their place in history. As Kobe Bryant won his fifth championship, of course people started to discuss whether or not he was basketball's GOAT.

THE VISION

The possibility of Lebron James joining this discussion occurred on Thursday, May 31, 2007. I’m not saying that this is when you could start claiming he was basketball’s GOAT, but in the mind of just about every fan there was a glimmer of hope. When Lebron James scored 48 points against the Detroit Pistons in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, his performance forced any basketball observer to think about what they had previously thought about James and envision something greater. Maybe something that had never been seen before.

I remember exactly where I watched that game. The couch I sat on. The people I watched it with. The reaction I had after each play. In fact, I remember lowering my friend’s hoop down to seven feet and attempting to recreate each of the moves Lebron made during that game until 1 a.m.*

****Obviously, the hoop needed to go down to seven feet just to make the superhuman things Lebron was doing even plausible for any of us to attempt.

To the basketball fan inside of me, it didn’t matter that the Cavaliers got swept in the NBA Finals by the San Antonio Spurs. It did matter to me that through sheer will power and athletic ability, Lebron was able to take his team nearly single-handedly to the NBA Finals. I cared that he was able to absolutely dominate a game and take over a game in the fourth quarter. It was impressive. It was mind-blowing. It was impossible…or so it seemed.

I cheered for James, not because I thought he was the most skilled or most talented, but because I believed he could do things on a basketball court that I had never seen before. I thought there was a chance he could be someone I wanted to tell my children about. I can vividly remember seeing a statistic comparing Lebron James to Oscar Robertson and my dad immediately saying, “Oscar Robertson. Now that was a basketball player. I’m sure you think of him as a Buck, but I can still remember getting to see him play on Saturdays when he was still with Cincinnati. He was amazing.”

I can remember watching Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals with my dad and marveling at the shooting display Ray Allen put on. I even made a remark about him possibly being the greatest shooter of all-time, but then discounting that remark because I had faint memories of Reggie Miller. Once again, there was my dad ready to set me straight. “Those two have nothing on Jerry West. Now that was a shooter. He had such a great jump shot. If he was firing, there was no way you were stopping him.”

After Game 6 in Detroit, I was ready to have that moment with my kid. I was preparing myself to set my kid straight. I was relishing the moment where I could tell my kid about how Lebron could take over a game at any time. Or the fact that he was a guard the size of a power forward. Or about the time he won his first NBA Finals. Even though Lebron has won two NBA MVPs and returned to the NBA Finals since that fateful night in Detroit, the vivid picture I have of this future moment has now turned into a hazy Polaroid yet to develop.

THE BACKLASH

People keep asking whether or not, Lebron deserves the backlash he has received in the aftermath of this year’s NBA Finals. Before attempting to decipher if he deserved the backlash he has received it is first necessary to understand why there is such backlash against Lebron.

The reasoning seems simple:

"He joined up with two of the top 30 players in the league to form a superteam.  The greatest of all-time don't do stuff like that.  Those guys wanted to kill each other.  Not team up together."

Let’s not kid ourselves. Bird, Magic, and Jordan would have never joined forces to create a superteam.  It's not because they were hypercompetitive super humans, but rather because they didn't need to. There was no reason for them to join forces. They all had good teams.

In the cases of Bird and Magic, both were drafted by great franchises. Magic was welcomed into the league with Kareem Abdul-Jabaar as his main running mate and later got to be teammates with Michael Cooper, Byron Scott, James Worthy, Norm Nixon, and Jamaal Wilkes. Bird's rookie team was very good as well with Hall of Famers Nate "Tiny" Archibald and Dave Cowens on the squad. Bird would lose Cowens in the next season, but was joined by Robert Parish and Kevin McHale in his second season.

Jordan's rookie team was certainly not even close to the same level as these other teams, but in his second season the Bulls drafted Scottie Pippen and those two would remain together for the remainder of Jordan's career. Sounds like a pretty good situation in comparison to anything Lebron saw in his years in Cleveland.

"He turned his back on a city that loved him and a state that raised him.  They loved him.  They revered him.  And he could have cared less."

There is no denying that Cleveland loved Lebron.  The fans of Cleveland would have done anything for him.  Most of them would have jumped in front of a speeding freight train to save his life.  They absolutely loved him.  Though the fans might have loved him, the ownership of the team did not reciprocate this same love. 

Dan Gilbert knew that he had Lebron until his rookie contract expired and in those seven years his general managers needed to find a suitable running mate for Lebron.  Just one.  One would be enough to keep him there.  Did he find that running mate?  No.  He trodded out Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Anderson Varejao, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Daniel "Boobie" Gibson, Shaquille O'Neal, Mo Williams, and Antawn Jamison.  That was all he could do.  In seven years.  Are you kidding me?

"How could he not tell the team first?  How could he make his decision into a publicity stunt?"

This is undoubtedly the most attractive reason to come down on Lebron.  And honestly there is no defense of "The Decision".  It was an absolutely terrible public relations decision and those around Lebron should have stopped it, but it happened.  And then the Heat Welcome Party occurred.  These terrible public relations decisions are a legitimate reason to not like Lebron, but unfortunately have nothing to do with his play on the court.  And from a media perspective, "The Decision" was one of the greatest things to ever happen to them.  It gave them something to talk about for months.  So the media's backlash against Lebron cannot be ascribed to this reasoning either.

THE YEARNING

The answer to the reasoning behind the backlash against Lebron is not as simple as the three reasons I outlined above.  It is a much deeper and complex issue.  In my opinion, the criticism Lebron has received is not necessarily solely directed at him, but also at ourselves. Though Lebron has always had doubters, for the most part, people believed that Lebron could be something we had never seen before.

As a culture, we yearn to see something we have yet to see. When we watch a movie, we hope the plot confuses us to the point that we question ourselves and look for something deeper. When we listen to a new artist, we hope their music transcends time and space and takes us on a journey we’ve never been before. Basketball is no different. Seeing a basketball player do things we didn’t think were possible drives us to watch basketball. It drives us to live. Seeing any artist do something that we thought was impossible drives us to believe we can do that same thing in our own lives. Maybe we can’t dunk on a 7-footer, but the obtainability of the seemingly impossible that we see in sports can inspire each and every one of us to do something great ourselves.

When someone destined for greatness with God-given tools seen very few times before fails, we start to feel the odds begin to be stack against ourselves.  I know it seems childish, but perhaps in our culture more than any other in the entire world, we look to athletes to be motivation and inspiration.  We love hearing the story of the down on his luck grocery store bagger that went on to win a Super Bowl.  We want to hear about the group of lovable losers that went down 3-0 against the richest team in the world and came back to win.  We go to sports to prove to us that anything is possible.

That’s why it has become so easy for sportswriters and fans to pile on Lebron. He was given a rare set of skills and didn’t use them to the extent he should have. There are people in the NBA who could be given ten years to improve their game and would still not be better than Lebron was out of high school.  There have been few players given the skills Lebron has and we love the idea of what he could become. 

Therefore, the backlash we have doesn't represent hatred or anger, but rather disappointment.  We're not honestly mad that Lebron decided to play on the team that gave him the best chance to win.  We're disappointed that he wasn't actually superhuman and couldn't bring a championship to downtrodden Cleveland all by himself.  We're not mad that Lebron didn't play well in the last few games of the NBA Finals.  We're disappointed that he didn't do what he did in the previous two rounds against Chicago and Boston.  With those series fresh in our minds, we KNEW that it was possible.  We KNEW how the story was supposed to end.  We KNEW Lebron would easily dismiss the Mavericks and continue on the path to becoming the Greatest Of All Time.  But then he disappointed us.  We don't like to be disappointed.  We like knowing what is going to happen next and for what is going to happen next to be a happy ending.

THE MEMORY

The backlash Lebron has received has been completely deserved.  It is not acceptable for Lebron to stop attacking the basket.  It is not acceptable that after eight years in the league, Lebron hasn't developed any semblance of a post game.  And it is not acceptable, that he has not become an unbelievable mid-range shooter or developed a go-to mid-range move.  These are all things we remember other great players, including Jordan and Bryant, doing as they got older and more mature.  We remember how these players became nearly unstoppable as their careers progressed because of the skills they perfected.  Nobody could stop MJ's turnaround.  Kobe's mid-range game and footwork is impeccable.  This is what we remember.

That's the thing, though.  When it comes to sports, we have very selective memories.  We remember the things we loved and the things we want to remember forever.  The type of things we want to tell our kids.  When it comes to Jordan's legacy, we remember the Flu Game and his last shot against Bryon Russell.  We remember the shot against Ehlo and Jordan running down the sideline shaking his head.  We choose not to remember that he didn't shoot his last shot against Byron Russell, but instead he shot his last shot in a meaningless game wearing a Wizards jersey.  We don't remember his struggles against the Bad Boys in Detroit.  We remember the things we love.

When it comes to Kobe's legacy, we remember the comeback he helped orchestrate against the Trailblazers in 2000.  The alley-oop he threw to Shaq.  Wiped from our memory is Game 5 of the 2000 Finals in which Bryant only scored 8 points in 37 minutes played.  Vivid in our memories is the night Bryant scored 81 points.  We love thinking of Bryant's huge playoff shots against the Suns and Spurs.  We forget about the way Bryant sulked during the 2007-2008 season.  We forget about his attempts to force a trade out of Los Angeles before the Lakers were able to appease his demands and get him Pau Gasol.  We remember him being the ultimate closer in big situations.  We remember the things we love.

With Lebron, we remember what is most vivid in our memory.  We remember Game 5 against the Celtics last season.  We remember the debacle that was his performance in the NBA Finals this season, but since we haven't had time to reminisce about the things we loved about him, we can't get the bad memories out of our mind.  In attempting to define his legacy, we focus on the here and now, but forget Lebron is still only 26 years old.

Only five years ago, Dirk Nowitzki was a sorry excuse for a basketball player.  He had choked away an NBA Finals that he should have won in 2006.  The following year he won an MVP award he didn't deserve.  Even though he led the Mavericks to the league's best record, his team became the first #1 seed to lose to a #8 seed in a seven game series in the NBA Playoffs.  He was a choke artist.  He was an overrated scorer.

Now.  Nowitzki has been called one of the 20 greatest NBA players of all-time.  He is a clutch player who absolutely dominates the fourth quarter.  He might even be the best forward of all-time not named Bird.  Five years ago, though, this seemed impossible.  The odds were stacked against Nowitzki and he needed to do something improbable.  Something that people had never seen before.

Just like Nowitzki, Lebron has now set the table for his redemption story.  A great career seems improbable, maybe even unattainable for Lebron at this point.  It seems like it is out of reach and out of the question.  To become the GOAT, Lebron needs to obtain the seemingly impossible.  If Lebron somehow manages to turn his career around and allow us to forget about these past two years, he will do something that no one thought he could do.  He will defy the odds.  He will give us something we have never seen before, the moment we all yearn to see each and every time we watch sports.  I know I will be watching.  Will you?