THE KING, THE GOAT, THE MAN!
Time to recognize LeBron as greatest all-around player ever
LeBron James finally broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring record with the kind of fadeaway jumper we have seen from him for 20 years, got to 36 points against the Oklahoma City Thunder and 38,388 for his career. And in that loud, bright moment, in the basketball city of Kareem and Jerry West and Elgin Baylor and Kobe and
Shaq, it became official that he had become the greatest scorer in pro basketball history. He had passed Kareem the way Hank Aaron had passed Babe Ruth once and in this time in sports, long after that time, it felt as if he had done something just as big in American sports.
But what had become official a long time ago — except for the haters — was that LeBron James was something even more than a scorer: The greatest allaround player of all time.
LeBron is right, of course. He calls the GOAT debate in the NBA “barbershop” stuff. It is. But then he also says that if he got to pick one player, of all time, he would pick himself No. 1. There’s a good reason for that: No one has ever done more basketball things, game to game, season to season, all the way to Kareem, to help his team than he has. No one. Not Michael. Not Magic, who had a brilliant all-around game himself. Not anybody. At the age of 38, the player known as the King says this about his own game now, at this point in his career when he’d be MVP again if he had a team worth a damn around him:
“I’m running past 21-year-olds, jumping higher than 23-year-olds . ... I’m so sharp now at year 20 than I was at year 10, or even year 15.”
So on the night he broke the record held by Kareem, the most underrated superstar in basketball history and maybe all sports, he went for more than 30 again, in a season when he is still averaging more than 30 a game. So he is still LeBron, who has been famous since he was 14 years old in Akron; who has done what he has done as a scorer in the same career when he is No. 4 in assists. Say this again: He isn’t just the greatest allaround player. He has been the greatest teammate.
“He got better every year,” Dave Checketts, who ran the Knicks once, said on Tuesday night.
Somehow it seemed fitting that this has happened on the week of Aaron’s birthday. Hank Aaron was born the year — 1934 — before Ruth hit his last home run in the big leagues. It took Mr. Aaron 38 years and change to pass Ruth. It has now taken LeBron roughly the same amount of time to pass Kareem. Kareem was in the house Tuesday night, and symbolically handed a basketball to LeBron as if he were the one getting his final career assist of his own, in one more moment of immense grace for the kid who came out of Power Memorial once to make history the way LeBron came out of St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron. The other day, JJ Redick, retired scorer, now as smart discussing basketball as anybody in the media anywhere, was talking about LeBron’s career on his podcast, and the total beauty of LeBron’s game. Over a couple of minutes, sounding as calm as a prosecutor, Redick systematically deconstructed so many of the false and sometimes boneheaded media criticisms that followed LeBron James all the way to last night. And that was kind of a beautiful thing from Redick.
“The constant narrative about nitpicking things with LeBron, most of them are just not factual.” He said. “‘LeBron James is not clutch,’ right? That’s another thing that people bring up all the time. LeBron has the most clutch-time points ever. He’s got over 2,600. The only other player with over 2,000 clutch time points is Kobe Bryant. LeBron has the second-most game-tying or
game-winning shots in the final minute of fourth quarter or overtime.”
Redick also pointed out that LeBron is in a virtual tie for the third-best scoring average all-time behind Michael and Wilt Chamberlain, in a scrum with Elgin Baylor, Kevin Durant, Jerry West.
Redick kept going from there. LeBron could be an All-Star at any position on the court. Throughout his career, he has covered any position on the court when it was necessary. When the flaws in his own defensive game were exposed in the 2011 NBA Finals the Heat lost to the Mavericks, he went back into the gym and came back the next season and was fourth in the voting for Defensive Player of the Year, in a season (2011-12) when he also happened to be MVP. He’s never going to win the six titles that Michael and Kareem did. Or the five that Kobe Bryant won in Los Angeles. It doesn’t change the fact that he has won titles in three different cities, and played in 10 NBA Finals, including eight straight at one point. Now, after all that, two decades into this, 38 years old, he is playing basketball at the same high level as he always has.
When it was over Tuesday night, he said this:
“The scoring record was never, ever even thought of in my head because I’ve always been a passfirst guy.”
Pass first, break the scoring record anyway. You want to know why the King is really the king?
That’s why.