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.
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