James makes point as best ever in NBA
Somehow it demeans LeBron James to call him the NBA’s career-leading scorer and stop there. In case you’ve been nodding off with Rip Van Winkle for 20 years, he’s a lot more than that.
He could play power forward or center for the all-University of No College team with Moses Malone, Kobe Bryant and two others of your choice. In a pinch, he could fill in at point guard, something Wilt Chamberlain could not do.
It is not his fault that we have expected too much from LeBron since Sports Illustrated profiled the Akron, Ohio, youth as the Next Big Thing. That he would go straight to the pros, not bothering with the college mill, was a foregone conclusion.
The only currency in professional sports is, right or wrong, championships won. That’s where Michael Jordan has him beaten and Bill Russell has them all licked, Jordan with a pair of three-peats with the Chicago Bulls and Russell 11 titles in 13 seasons with the Boston Celtics.
One thing to come of the ESPN documentary series “The Dream Team” is that Jordan, for the deification he has received since leaving the University of North Carolina, may not be one’s first choice as a teammate. Let us not forget, though not wishing to demean either player, that Jordan’s six titles came with Scottie Pippen on the same side and none without. This is for those who think that either player would not be as good on his own. (Pippen could not win a news conference, no matter how he tried, his inability to express himself better costing him in the court of public opinion.)
LeBron James, like Clint Eastwood in the movies, has been with us forever, it seems. His first tour with the Cleveland Cavaliers amounts to a spaghetti Western in a career that took him to Hollywood. He, like Joe DiMaggio in another day, is the biggest name in any building he, in this case, stoops to enter. We know enough about his personal life that son Bronny is a top national high school prospect. Better to have one basketball-playing child than, like another famous Laker who played most of his career in the paint, 20,000 references.
If James goofed along the way, and he has, his 2010 “Decision” to leave Cleveland and play for the Miami Heat was handled poorly. The King’s critics couldn’t stop laughing after a team with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh lost to Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals. James’ first title, the second for Wade, came in 2012 against the Oklahoma City Thunder and a repeat crown followed when Bosh launched one from the corner in Game Seven against the San Antonio Spurs, who avenged the defeat in a 2014 Finals rematch.
James’ highest moment, it says here, came when he made champions in 2016 of the Cavaliers. That he did it with Kyrie Irving, now something of a radioactive player and doing business in Dallas, becomes more noteworthy by the day. It should not be forgotten that James, a hometown hero of sorts, delivered Cleveland its first world title since the Browns, in Jim Brown’s penultimate season on the gridiron, won the 1964 NFL championship.
The James years in California have produced a fourth NBA title for but likely not another. Anthony Davis has not stayed well long enough to keep it going, and Russell Westbrook, traded this week, proved a bust in Tinseltown. His profile higher than anyone who has coached him, James clutched the Lawrence O’Brien Trophy when penciled into the lineup by Erik Spoelstra in Miami, Tyronn Lue in Cleveland and Frank Vogel in Los Angeles.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with whom LeBron is said not to be close, attended the coming-out
party Tuesday night when James broke the scoring record. LeBron’s many critics had grist for their mill after Oklahoma City won the game.
Abdul-Jabbar, first at UCLA and then with the Milwaukee Bucks and Lakers in the NBA (winning three championships in college, six in the pros), played more than 20 years at a level I thought no one would equal.
James belongs on the same Mount Rushmore with Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and, since basketball is a fiveon-five game, save a spot for Bill Russell. Sorry, Wilt and Kobe.