Sweet Stench of Success

To answer your question, Alistair, what happened was the real King showed up.

Lebron James, global icon, was never designed to win gritty, team-driven, playoff basketball games. He was designed to sell shoes and make witty commercials where five versions of the King argue about who gets the last piece of honey-glazed ham at a family dinner. Lebron James made his Decision on national television because that's where Lebron James lives - on national television. In some ways, the grand project of James' life is just as well-served being the loser of the NBA finals as it would have been had he emerged victorious.

This series aside, James will always be compared unfavorably to Michael Jordan. When Jordan was growing up, playing college ball, even his first few years in the Association, basketball was very different than it is today. Jordan changed that with his shoe line, his Jumpman logo, and his ridiculous level of play that made being clutch in the Finals the final benchmark of all success. Until the Jordan era, a little kid in Akron (or Santa Claus, IN, or the Bronx) didn't practice layups on a rim with no net dreaming of becoming a "global icon". Maybe a comfortable life for them and their families. Maybe some small measure of local fame. But never an icon.

Lebron James has made every move from a young age - switching from football to basketball, a more star driven sport, playing out of his mind in the Olympics, televising the crucifixion of Cleveland - to extend the limits of his own hype. Dirk Nowitzki just became a first-ballot hall of famer, something we'll likely appreciate more in 20 years than we will for the next four, or as long as the volatile experiment in South Beach is hanging on the tips of everyone's tongues. Whether by his own doing or the media's creation, Lebron James is the center of the basketball universe, even in defeat. The fact is, Lebron James wasn't just afraid of the moment - he was terrified. Karl Malone did not play his best basketball in the 98 finals, and lost to one of the all-time great teams. Charles Barkely did play at his best in 1993, but was never going to beat MJ. Lebron James played like garbage against Dirk and a group of aging mid-level stars - he was outplayed by Jason Terry. The previous post discussed James' athleticism, his passing, his inhuman abilities to score the basketball - but he doesn't have the fierce will to win, the heart of a champion. And maybe he never wanted it.

In the 2007 NFL draft, the Oakland Raiders made one of the worst decisions in their franchise's checkered history by selecting Jamarcus Russell, the LSU quarterback, with the first overall selection. Russell had almost unmatched size and arm-strength. QB guru Tom Martinez, who has mentored everyone from Tom Brady to Dan Marino, called Russell the purest physical specimen he had ever coached. Sound familiar? After 3 years, and 40 million dollars, the Raiders cut loose Russell, who didn't have a competitive football bone in his body. No team has come calling at his door since. All Russell seemed to want was a fistful of dollars. All James wanted, and got, was his face on a thousand front pages. The expression on it, one of confusion and disgrace, was irrelevant.

Can Anyone Explain This To Me?

I'm at a total loss in explaining the LeBron James phenomenon. Look, let's be real, the guy is talented, seriously talented beyond belief. If we watch sports in general, and basketball in particular, to see athletes perform physically arduous tasks that challenge the limits of what the human frame can accomplish (and this is a large part of why we do watch sports), then LeBron James is the NBA's best player, possibly basketball's best player ever. As we have said over and over again on this blog: he is a point guard in Karl Malone's body. He has amazing dexterity and some of the most impressive and emphatic power of anyone who has ever left the ground. He dunks with impunity, getting to the basket as quickly and ferociously as a lion riding a freight train. It is impossible to write about him without resorting to these hoary cliches, because the words "amazing," "lion," "unbelievable," and "power" really describe him. And yet, impressive as his raw athleticism is, he is more than a jumping, running, dunking machine. He is a seriously good passer, finding his teammates in the right spots and at the right times with precision. He plays some of the best defense in the world (he completely shut down the league's MVP Derrick Rose in the last few minutes of game 5 against the Bulls). He has a high basketball IQ, is capable of getting himself different looks, running the pick and roll on both ends, and navigating everything, be it a fast break or a solid, Boston Celtics defense. He can also hit impossible big shots and put his team on his back (as he did in 2009 to pull one away from the Magic and in 2007 to heroically spark a comeback and take his ragtag group to the finals, respectively). He is capable of all this and more, and it is, in sum total, the most complete set of basketball skills anyone has ever possessed. It is why hard nosed folk like Larry Bird say that when all is said and done there will just be LeBron.

But you already know all that. And here we are. Even with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, homecourt advantage, and the pressure considerably lifted off of his shoulders, LeBron James has given us another inexplicable performance. The Dallas Mavericks are the champions and LeBron had a +/- of negative 24 points. If only they had played James Jones, maybe they could have won this thing.

I joke because I do not understand. How could someone with these talents play like LeBron did in this series? Is there something about LeBron's talents that precludes him from using them all at once? Is the pressure to hard for him to bear? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case. He is able to laugh and joke with Dwyane Wade, and dig himself deeper into a hole. But when game time comes, Wade focuses. He may turn unpleasant, angry, rude. But he pushes himself as hard as he can, straining until his body gives out and frustration sets in. LeBron seems not to notice the lights and cameras. He seems to be thinking of his elementary school classmates, or counting in the fibonacci sequence, or giggling at Dirk's accent. The attention makes him more absent-minded, more unaware that he is onstage in front of the world, more dreamily caught in his own head and far away from reality. And in his stupor he performs at a sub-All Star level.

This drives me crazy. It perplexes me and gives me no satisfaction. I wanted the Heat to loose this series. But I wanted them to be beaten. It is thoroughly disheartening that LeBron seems not so much demolished but distracted. I would far rather see him win than what we got. I like LeBron personally, and don't hold it against him as a man. But as a basketball player, this is totally unacceptable.

Don't get me wrong, Dallas winning was a great event. The series was really enjoyable and we got some great basketball and a pretty good narrative out of it. Overall, I'm glad the Heat lost. They deserved to for missing 13 free throws. But I hope that LeBron James gets a Ridlin prescription, or at least the means to explain himself. Until that happens, it seems more and more that the man Bird declared king, is frustratingly blank. The person who best exemplifies the godlike zeniths the human body can reach, he who makes Wade, Bryant, Paul, Rose, and Anthony look like so many kindergartners playing against a 12 year-old, seems more and more utterly inhuman in all the other ways that matter to us. And the other ways we have of being human -- defeat, victory, pain, suffering, anger, weakness, humor, and beneficence (all the things Shakespeare wrote about) -- is what we really watch sports for. I know that this is a bit overblown and unfair to LeBron who has already been goaded, perhaps against his better judgment and full understanding, into moving to Miami and declaring himself "serious" at every opportunity. He keeps saying that each game is the most important of his career and so on and so forth. But until he plays like that -- until he approaches the game like Dwyane Wade does -- his words are noises devoid of meaning. So are his skills; they might as well be the gestures of a man alone in a blizzard, performed subconsciously. They exist more in theory than in tangible reality. If LeBron can understand that (I'm not so sure that he can), then there's one thing he can do about it: win. Until then, I don't think anyone can answer this post's question: Who was that?

Your God is Dead. Long Live Your God.

"There's a curse that comes with limitless potential: Everyone judges you against only that limitless potential." -Bill Simmons   


Basketball is the only sport where history is written not only as it unfolds, but in a great many cases, before it has begun to unfold at all. Only on a lacquered floor could a superstar like Dirk Nowitski go comparatively unnoticed for the past five years. The only explanation is that the Teutonic Furor had lost his only chance to grab the ring in 2006, and that whole Golden State unpleasantness the year after. Now that Dirk is back in the spotlight, he's Larry Freaking Bird. Whether that's true or not, I don't care to say - but we can all agree Dirk has not gotten significantly better in the course of this 2010-2011 campaign. He's simply closer to the microphone. 


Gregg Doyel controversially asked Lebron James if he was shrinking in the 4th quarter, the place where "superstars become superstars". This loaded question and its meaningless response aside, is Lebron James a superstar? He has won MVP, that's true, he has played in the finals (although, when the best player on his own team, he has never won a finals game) and he has guided teams to 60 win seasons. Lebron has taken a backseat in these past two games, compiling a meager 25 points with a respectable 18 assists, letting the alpha dog Wade try to beat the Mavericks for the second time in his career. All the games have been close, and Miami currently has two home games left in this best-of-three tilt. They're in a position to win, and every article you read is about how James is "shrinking."


What is he shrinking from? Michael Jordan, the greatest competitor of all time. Michael Jordan was not the greatest athlete of all time, though he may have had the most accomplished career and may have dominated his sport more than anyone besides perhaps Tiger Woods has ever dominated a sport. Michael Jordan was a competitor. Lebron James is an athlete. Michael Jordan could take the pressure and the team on his back and beat you, flat out, no matter what, any night of his professional life. Scouts and sportswriters saw a 15-year-old Lebron James, already heavier and taller than Jordan had ever been, and said "what if...". In doing this, they pretty much guaranteed that James would never live up to their ridiculous expectations.


No one said after Albert Pujols rookie year "this guy is not only the greatest right-handed hitter of all time, he'll probably end up having a better career than Babe Ruth." If people thought Peyton Manning was the best quarterback they'd seen coming out of college since Elway, no one dared say aloud, on national television, they thought Manning would surpass #7's records. Sure, it was important that those two guys, tops in their sport, win titles, which they did (although Peyton's took a while), but no one was saying "just wait 'til he's won 6, then we can really start this debate!"


When James was draft in 2003, basketball was in something of a lull. Jordan was long gone, Shaq and Kobe were beginning to tussle, and the only real one-man show was Allen Iverson. The writers needed a savior, someone we could watch in our time and claim as the greatest and, not surprisingly, they chose the 6'8 kid out of Akron with wide receiver speed. And it wasn't just enough that he win all those titles, he had to do it with a smile on his face and a cloud of chalk above his head. There's a lot more of that mean, Hall-of-Fame-induction-speech side of Jordan in Kobe Bryant than there ever was or will be in Lebron James.  


They ground him down so much, made him crave a championship so much, that he ultimately realized his own limitations, and was forced to partner with Wade, rather than staying in Cleveland and living the unexamined life. No matter how this series ends up, we've all learned one thing: Lebron was never the man we thought he was. Or wanted him to be.

We're back!

Here at True Greatness, we were so downtrodden and defeated after Deron Williams and Kendrick Perkins were traded away that writing about basketball became an aversive and distasteful undertaking. We are officially back. Two very brief thoughts about NBA basketball as it stands today:

1. KOC- My biggest issue with him is not that he is a bad general manager overall. In fact, a lot of short term fixes that he has done are quite good (e.g. trading for Kyle Korver, stealing Boozer away from the Cavs, seeing talent in Wesley Matthews, snagging big Al out of thin air, etc.) My main complaint is that he appears to have no long-term vision. Are the Jazz rebuilding, or are the competing to be the 8th seed to lose to the Thunder in 5? Is Devin Harris a Jazz man for life, or a place holder until someone better shows up? My personal plan would be to trade up in the draft and get either Williams or Irving. Get rid of veterans who cannot turn us into contenders (sorry, CJ). Rebuild and give the new guys some playing time. And do it all with purpose and vision. You aren't the worst, KOC. You are far from it. But you need to learn to look to the future, not just react to the present.

2. I would also like to officially endorse the True Greatness pick for the finals: Go Mavs!

That's it for now. Hopefully we will be back with more soon.