A reader, Green Bay asked me to comment on LeBron James' legacy and since I am a whore to my readers, I absolutely will do this for him. I have had a long time to look at it and I have come to my conclusion. He is never going to compared with Michael Jordan/Henry Aaron/Joe Montana/Wayne Gretzky any of 'the greatest of all time.'
He will be in the category of Bo Jackson, Alex Rodriguez, Julius Erving, Deion Sanders, Eric Lindros, and Ken Griffey Jr. Also you wonder why I put Deion in there is because he is in the freak athlete category of guys we will probably not see for another fifteen to twenty years. These guys are all uber athletes who could have been the greatest of all time at their sport but they never lived up to the potential that everybody wanted them to be.
LeBron will never be the greatest of all time. I cannot call the guy the greatest who wanted to play with his buddy instead of kicking his ass. Would Jordan had wanted to come to Phoenix to play with Charles Barkley? Hell no, he wanted to kicks Chuck's ass every time they played and we would have never seen Magic Johnson/Larry Bird together. There is no hate in the NBA anymore, Kobe is so old school compared to these other jokers in the league because he is the only one with the serial killer look in his eyes. Dwyane Wade doesn't have that look nor does LeBron.
He latched on to the Heat because LeBron did not want to be Karl Malone, Dirk Nowitzki, or Dan Marino of great players who never win a title. LeBron couldn't deal with that so he jettisoned to a place where he and his tremendous PR team believed that would happen. If LeBron was like Kobe, he would have said, "You know what who cares about Donald Sterling, I am joining the Clippers and battling Kobe Bryant out for the Staples Center for six months." Honestly had he decided to join the Clips, I would have been a LeBron fan. As Vince McMahon says, "LeBron doesn't have the grapefruits to do anything like that."
The one thing that told me LeBron hated pressure like A-Rod and others before him was the comment "It will be really nice to not have to score 30 points a game." I think Kobe goes on a Mel Gibson-like rant when he doesn't get his 30 so for Bron to tell people he doesn't want to score like that makes absolutely no sense. To me, that is the quote that I will point out and tell you that he doesn't want it as much as others before.
He is like the kids we all knew in high school who had all the talents in the world but never worked hard enough to reach their full potential. They let everybody tell them how good they were and they never tried to be better than what they were. Nobody ever told them they were wrong or that is a bad idea. LeBron needs that person and sadly, he will never get that.
-Charlie.
5 comments:
dude said deion sanders
Chuck...
As always, great stuff.
I think yours are the prevailing sentiments among basketball fans.
But it might still be too early to solidify LBJ's legacy.
Let's say the Heat rattle off three, four or five titles.
Will we then look at his career with an asterisk? Will we hold Wade's career in higher regard better because he'll have one more ring? Will we consider Spoelstra as one of the greatest coaches ever, assuming Pat Riley lets him keep his job?
I'm still trying to digest all this and not be too reactionary. In fact, I'll have a piece up soon on sportschump.net... as soon as I'm able to gather my thoughts.
Shout at ya' soon.
Everything will be alright in the end
If its not alright
Then its not the end
I'm so sick of hearing "Hes not the greatest ever because he joined up with another star". Thats the biggest load of shit I've seen since you moved out Charlie. Its easy for Jordan and Magic to say they wouldn't have done it when they inherited teams that included Kareem, Byron Scott, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr, and on and on. I'd like to see how the ultra competitive MJ would have reacted to playing with Mo Williams and Big Z. Let me give you a hint, it wouldn't have been pretty. He would have been out of there so fast.
Plus, lets face it this was a no win situation for LBJ. Had he gone somewhere on his own and said "I wanna do it on my own" everyone would have ripped him for being selfish. Just like Kobe got ripped for being selfish when he drove Shaq out of town.
Really? People would have ripped him for being selfish? I wouldn't have gave two shits had he left Cleveland to do it his way.
I agree that he needs a Robin and Mo, and Antwan don't cut it. Yet a guy like Wade doesn't constrast styles enough.
I mean had he got CP3 or Amar'e, that makes so much more sense than Wade. I just don't see how it works.
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