LeBron no Brady, but close
Two icons offer similar view
Yes, the LeBron JamesTom Brady comparisons make sense.
In their respective leagues, each is the dominant and iconic player of his era.
They’ve won multiple championships.
They pitch lots of cool stuff in TV ads.
And while James hasn’t quite emerged as his sport’s GOAT — Michael Jordan, decked out in his Hanes underwear, is still blocking LeBron’s way — we can comfortably stop the debate on the football side and give Brady his GOAT horns.
Thanks for playing, Joe Montana, but you need to go home now.
Rival players wet their pants when they compete against LeBron James and Tom Brady. Sure. they talk and walk, and even dress, with a ton of attitude in the run-up to a showdown against LeBron or Brady. Remember the Houston Texans showing up at Gillette Stadium in those fancy letterman jackets to play the Pats on Monday Night Football in December 2012? Those jackets, and that meeting, were supposed to represent some kind of changing of the guard in the NFL. The Texans were 11-1. The Pats were 9-3, and that’s pretty good, but they didn’t have the fancy letterman jackets.
Final score: Patriots 42, Texans 14.
The teams met again in the playoffs, again at Foxboro, with the Pats emerging with a wasn’t-asclose-as-the-score-wouldindicate 41-28 victory.
We’ve seen some of that with the Celtics and LeBron this season. No, the C’s don’t sashay around in the fancy letterman jackets, though they did do the dopey dress-in-black, fake-funeral thing when they played the Washington Wizards in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
When the Celtics hosted the Cleveland Cavaliers on April 5 at the Garden, the game was supposed to be some kind of playoff weather forecast. As ESPN play-by-plan man Mike Breen told the Globe’s Chad Finn, “If anyone is underestimating (the Celtics) now, they won’t be able to do so for much longer without consequences. And I suspect LeBron knows this.”
I suspect LeBron didn’t know this. He ho-hummed his way to 36 points in a 114-91 victory.
Nobody was suggesting a changing of the guard. The Cavs are still the Cavs, LeBron still LeBron. But just as the November 2012 Houston-New England game might have given the Texans an opportunity to give the Pats something the think about, the April 5 Cleveland-Boston game might have given the Cavs something to think about. It did not.
It’s always commendable when professional athletes circle the date on the calendar to remind themselves of an upcoming game against the top team with the iconic player. As fans, you want that brand of brash. The flip side, of course, is the embarrassing fallout when the brash kids get schooled by the top team with the iconic player.
We saw it with the Texans and Patriots. We are seeing it with the Cavaliers and the Celtics. After drilling the Celtics in that April 5 meeting, the Cavs have humiliated the Green in Games 1 and 2 of the Eastern Conference finals by scores of 117-104 and 130-86.
There are, of course, many differences between LeBron James and Tom Brady. Such as this: The industry that is professional basketball likes having LeBron James as its marquee attraction, whereas the industry that is professional football spits up its collective milk at the very thought of Tom Brady being its marquee attraction.
Yes, Brady is the cover boy for the upcoming Madden NFL 18.
And, yes, Brady always gets a dramatic, voicedover, prerecorded intro any time the Pats are in a big game (or any game, I guess), complete with super slo-mo of big touchdown passes and a layer of music that evokes images of war being waged.
But let’s face it, folks: Pretty much everyone outside New England hates Tom Brady, even if their reasons for feeling that way are flat-out comical — he’s pretty, has a supermodel wife, never wears the same outfit twice, etc. But he also wins a lot, and that never goes over well, especially with NFL owners not named Kraft. And there’s Deflategate, and spare me your high school chemistry projects. Deflategate is part of the Brady permanent record.
Other than bitter fans who hate LeBron James . . . just, you know, because ... the basketball industry sees gold. Rival NBA owners don’t sit in darkness late into the night, twirling ball bearings in one hand, trying to figure out a way to destroy him. They understand that a healthy, participatory LeBron James is good for the entire league.
And the entire league will be pleased to know that LeBron is headed back to the NBA Finals. He pretty much owns the NBA Finals now, just as Brady pretty much owns the Super Bowl.
Like them or hate them, your choice. But when they’re gone each league will be the poorer — even if the NFL owners not named Kraft haven’t figured that out yet.