Not a Mickey Mouse operation for LeBron
James wants another title & we get to watch NBA hoops
It was the debut of Bubble Ball on Thursday night at Disney World in Orlando, first the New Orleans Zions against the Utah Jazz, and then the main event, Lakers against the Clippers. And even with all the Bubble Ball protocols in place, and no fans in the gym except those whose faces we could see watching via Zoom, it looked more like real NBA basketball than I thought it would, and far less jarring than all those empty ballparks in baseball. Of course it was still a crazy setting in an increasingly crazy world, and not just for professional sports.
Will the NBA make it out of summer and to the finish line in the fall? Your guess is as good as mine, in this time when 20 percent of baseball was shuttered on Friday because of Covid-19. Is the title, if we get that far, going to feel as legit as a traditional title in pro basketball? It's not, and all the wishing in the world won't make it so. It's going to feel like an O'Brien Trophy Lite. It just is. Will that be fair to the eventual champion? It won't. Tell me what is fair these days?
But for a few minutes late Thursday night in that Disney World gym, things did look the way they used to, in professional basketball and professional sports, because LeBron James was still LeBron James, which means still the main event in sports, at least in this country. You wonder if there even would have been a game Thursday night, or even a bubble, if LeBron had decided to sit the whole thing out. But he can't win another title, and continue to chase Michael and Kobe , by marching on Washington instead of wearing a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt before a game.
Still, there he was when the NBA resumed, reminding all of us, even on a night when he was outscored by Kawhi Leonard and Paul George and Anthony Davis and only ended up with 16 points in 34 minutes, why he is the greatest all-around basketball player who has ever lived. Sports isn't the same and isn't going to be, not for a long time, not in this crazy world, where the NBA is already talking about starting the 2020-21 season in a bubble before they are even close to finishing the current one.
But in the last minute of Lakers vs. Clippers LeBron reminded everybody, truly, that as hot as we constantly hear the NBA is, or was before the virus hit, it is not nearly as interesting or compelling or as much of an entertainment when he isn't in the gym.
So there he was, after George tied the game with a 3-pointer, showing you in one minute all the facets of his game: Scoring, rebounding, defending. He drove the basket at the other end after George's basket, missed a runner, blew past everybody to get a put-back, and put the Lakers back ahead.
Still plenty of time, a dozen seconds left, for the Clippers to win.
Only at this point LeBron seemed willing to guard everybody in a Clippers uniform if it meant winning the Lakers this game. First he bottled up the great Kawhi, the MVP of last year's NBA's Finals for the Raptors, seven years younger than LeBron, already working on a 28-point night. Not only did LeBron seemed to bottle up Kawhi Leonard, he seemed to have him surrounded, all by himself, as if it were suddenly five-on-one.
Leonard had no choice but to give the ball up to George. At this point LeBron switched off one of the best players on the planet for another. First he seemed willing to chase George all the way to Space Mountain as the last seconds of the game disappeared off the block. Finally he contested George into a miss from the top of the circle as the buzzer sounded.
Will all this last? Who knows? But for Re-Opening Night, the stars in the gym played like stars before the biggest star acted like just that.
“No matter what the [situation] is, no matter what the bubble is, no fans, or [with] fans, basketball is basketball and competitive spirit is competitive spirit, so we're right back to where we left off," James said when it was over.
He might never win as many titles as Michael or Kobe. But if he does win a title this year, lite or not, he will have won his fourth NBA title with his third team, and played in the Finals for the ninth time. Before he got to LA, he had been to the Finals eight years in a row. He still could be an All-Star at any position on the court. He is still the best player, the best teammate, as unselfish as any superstar in pro basketball history.
But you must understand: